The Sentence by Louise Erdrich on November 9, 2021
Genres: Fiction / Ghost, Fiction / Indigenous, Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Women
Pages: 400
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The Sentence asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book.
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich is a raw, poetic novel told about a book store that is haunted during the pandemic. This one is highly character driven, which I don’t normally go for but I did enjoy. This also delves into the history of the Ojibwe in Minnesota. Even though this was character driven, there was a lot going on with so much to unpack.
Tookie is the main character who the story is centered on. She proudly identifies as Ojibwe, but doesn’t flaunt it. Tookie has a complicated past that she continually tries to face throughout the novel. She was arrested and in prison for a dumb crime that she was helping a friend with. I would say she was a naïve criminal and prison helped her with her love of books.
Tookie’s husband, Pollux, also played a role in her history. He was a police officer and was the arresting officer. It seems fate intervened for them to get back together, as he never forgot about her.
After she put her history behind her, Tookie got a job at a bookstore and ends up encountering all types of people. She gives them all nicknames. Then one day, one of her customer’s dies while reading a mysterious book. Tookie feels something in the store, then books are being moved and noises are being made. Her customer, Flora, is haunting the bookstore. How can Tookie help Flora move on? And make herself feel less restless and unsettled at the same time?
The rest of the characters in this book were also very interesting. Pollux’s daughter has a son who is very close to them, and she is the typical stepdaughter. The other bookstore employees also have such interesting character and wit. Erdrich also inserts book titles and authors into the story that make you want to start a list. It’s like a love letter to books. But I really loved the list in the back of the book. And also the story covered the George Floyd story that leaves the reader feeling uneasy.
Erdrich is the master of the lyrical prose. I re-read so many sentences in this book and highlighted a ton in my book. The Sentence is one I will be thinking about for a while. The themes are numerous in this one and are race, identity, ghosts, incarceration, love, friendship, and the love of books, to name a few. The setting of Minneapolis and a bookstore was a win for me. And even though I’m not a huge fan of character driven novels, I had to see how Tookie’s story was going to end.
“What happens when you let an unsatisfactory present go on long enough? It becomes your entire history”
“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape”.
“You can’t get over things you do to other people as easily as you get over things they do to you.“