Lisa's Reviews > The Sentence

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, "The Sentence" is a chameleon. Beginning as a slapstick crime caper it morphs into something much more serious.

Erdrich writes characters that are real and fully developed; I want to walk into my local bookstore to meet them.

She perfectly captures the feelings of that period when we had no understanding of this new virus, the fear and unease of going out and being around others, searching for hand sanitizer and masks, and the pleasure of being given permission to slow down and live differently. Remember the first time you got on the road in spring of 2020 and there was no traffic? And as Erdrich points out bookstores are deemed an essential business during the pandemic, making books as important as "food, fuel, heat, garbage collection, snow shoveling, and booze." As work temporarily shut down, for the first time in quite a while I was able to fully indulge my passion for reading for over a month.

And just as I begin to settle in with living with this disease, George Floyd’s death explodes onto the headlines, once again pointing out the injustice and oppression of our legal system for people of color. And oh how some of us reacted. Erdrich captures the scene:

"I passed burnt-out stores with walls like broken teeth. ... I passed a woman with a shopping cart full of children. . . . Pockets of peace, then full-out soldiers in battle gear. ... I passed people going about their normal business, planting their gardens, flower beds, watering their lawns. I passed a popcorn store that was open and I stopped to buy popcorn. The popcorn smell modified the smell of old tear gas – sour, musky chalk.. ... I got stopped by a cloud when I was nearly home. It was a cloud of emotion. I came to a halt and tried to breathe my way through the mist. It was cleared by the loud curfew alert on my phone."

And all the while Tookie is contending with Flora's ghost in the bookstore. As Flora becomes bolder, Tookie works to decode what this ghost needs to be at rest.

Erdrich also brilliantly shows the scars and the beauty of family and friend relationships that sustain us.

A few other passages that really spoke to me:

"A newborn baby has a powerful effect on character. But so does a toddler. A child. A preteen. A teenager. A mother changes with every stage. Some stages are within a mother's skill set. Some stages are like being told to scale a cliff using a rope attached to nothing."

"I really believe that to live inauthentically is to live in a sort of hell."

"You can't get over the things you do to other people as easily as you get over things they do to you."

". . . delight is a word I rarely use. Delight seems insubstantial; happiness feels more grounded; ecstasy is what I shoot for; satisfaction is hardest to attain."

These last two years have been a roller coaster ride for us all. We need to remember the events and our reactions; they are crucial to moving forward. Perhaps a good dose of this novel will help you, as it has me, come to some sort of reckoning with this time, allowing for hope among the tragedy.