Will Byrnes's Reviews > Shadow Tag

Shadow Tag is, we hear tell, a novelization of the demise of Erdrich’s marriage. It is an insightful, beautifully written portrait in which the character of the marriage, Dorian-Gray-like, is revealed to be somewhat wanting. Gil and Irene are the unhappy couple.

Gil has made a successful career painting his wife. We see in what we are told about his paintings the changes in their marriage.

Irene America had been the subject of his paintings in all of her incarnations—thin and virginal, a girl, then womanly, pregnant, naked, demurely posed or frankly pornographic…but now he was losing confidence and control. His paintings were hiding from him because Irene was hiding from him. He could see it in the opacity of her eyes, the insolence of her flesh, the impatient weariness of her body when she let down her guard.

We see in the images he paints the changes in how she feels. He may deny what he is seeing, but the paint does not lie. Irene sees her artistic relationship with Gil as her being food for him to consume.


Louise Erdrich - image from Britannica

Irene is an art historian and is researching a work on George Catlin, so there is plenty of interplay between her topical musings and the reality of herself as a literal work of art. She talks about how Catlin had added an element in his paintings, new to most, the shadow. Many of the locals were concerned that their souls were being taken by these paintings, as Irene wonders if she is losing a piece of herself with each of Gil’s paintings. Contemplating Catlin’s work,

Because of the shadows, his paintings had the direct force and power of the supernatural, the dream replica, the doppelganger. It was as if a sudden twin had been created right before the subject. A twin that seemed to live and breathe and follow one with its eyes and yet was motionless. The paintings were objects of veneration and of fear. Some swore uneasily that those who allowed their portraits to be painted, eyes open, would not lie peacefully after death, as some aspect of their being would live on, staring out at the world. Others, disturbed that Catlin painted buffalo and took them away with them in his portfolio, tied his actions to the increasing scarcity of the herds upon which their lives depended. So it was, the images stole their subjects and, for the rest of the world, became more real, until it seemed they were the only things left.

They are both Native American, less than 100%, but enough to count. Erdrich always brings to her tales her experience as a Native American, offering those of us who are not of that group a look into Native culture and issues. Still, a bad marriage is a bad marriage, and Erdrich offers rich detail describing what a failed union looks like, the games each partner plays, the lies each partner tells, the roles of the children in the usually silent battle, and how their familiarity binds them.

they reverted to one of their endless arguments, first about the noodles, then about kitsch. This was not fighting, but the sort of argument that could go on for years and years, where each found bits of evidence to prove their point and dropped it into the next go-round a month, two or three months, on. They were back in old territory. They argued sometimes for comfort.

If GR readers are typical of the population at large, it is likely that about half of us have known the joys of a marital demise. I know I have. Erdrich’s scenes from a marriage rang very true in many instances, and you know early on in the story that the marriage is in serious danger.

For years, he thought, he had been mourning a death without knowing exactly who had died or how it had come about.

The story alternates between third-person depiction of the relationship between Irene and Gil, and Irene’s entries into her two diaries. One she keeps for herself, the other she uses as a weapon against Gil. She knows he sneaks looks at it, and she plants lies there to torment him.

They have three children, which adds battleground material between the pair. And a description of how one of the children keeps a memory log sounds very much like something from the author’s personal history.

Erdrich fills her novels with imagery and power. One in particular was a visualization of a wall between the two that contained its own DMZ. Another was looking down into frozen lake water

I wish we’d see a fish or turtle or something more down there, said Riel. [Gil and Irene’s daughter] And it did seem almost anything might swim into view. But there was only an amber leaf, a frayed heart suspended at the edge of a vertical white crack that went down so far it disappeared.

Despite the disappointment, the anger, the cruelty, the dishonesty, these people are very, very bonded. Can they survive without each other? Erdrich offers a shocking twist at the end, but the primary benefit is in the journey through the shadows of this marriage, and the light of Erdrich’s artistic mastery.

==============================EXTRA STUFF

The author’s FB page. Erdrich is part owner of BirchBark Books in Minneapolis. It is not quite her personal web site, but is, I guess, close enough.

A fascinating article on George Catlin in Smithsonian Magazine

Other Louise Erdrich novels I have reviewed
-----2021 - The Sentence
-----2020 - The Night Watchman
-----2017 - Future Home of the Living God
-----2016 - LaRose
-----2012 - The Round House
-----2008 - The Plague of Doves
-----2005 - The Painted Drum