Book Thoughts: The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
After I read a book, I generally email my thoughts or notes to a friend. I'm now also copying these first emails to this blog since it's easier to revisit.
Original Sent Date: Sept 25, 2024
Another indigenous fiction book. Listened to this one through audio again so I don't recall exactly what the protagonist was (Ojibwe I think is my guess), though her husband is Potawatomi.
This book had a really strong and somewhat funny start with much better writing than the other books I've been reading lately. The character of Tookie is very strong, but the book kind of falters after the first bit that covers her incarceration and I found myself bored at times.
The book also covers the George Floyd protests and tries to talk about indigenous police stuff with some nuance, I guess.
Other thoughts:
Feel meh about Tookie and Pollux's relationship. It's all right and they're okay partners. It just feels very het, even though Tookie herself might not be (I didn't really get the handle on this).
Worse was Hetta and Laureant's relationship, that almost felt like it came out of a bad romance novel. I guess this is yet another situation where the purpose of this misses me because I don't share their traditional beliefs about spiritual beings.
Hetta falling for Asema (which btw in audio is pronounced more like O-seh-ma) and then nothing being done on that front was kind of weird. I guess it was to mitigate the heterosexuality of it all but like Tookie's relationship it just kind of came off like "Sometimes you might fall for a woman but ultimately you'll end up with a man."
Also feel eh about the Flora haunting thing. It was a clever reversal to have the haunter be a settler instead of an indigenous person as in bad old tropes, but I only really found it marginally interesting.
The author is another one of those people that really loves the stuff they read so they want to reference it all the time. I guess in her defense she actually owns the bookstore that she wrote her book about.
The take on policing was kind of lukewarm when it came to Pollux but I guess they're trying to say that it's complicated for indigenous people with the whole tribal police setup.
All in all, I think it's an interesting piece that specifically strives to capture the moment in time of 2020 with the George Floyd protests and COVID-19.
Was I bored though? yeah. finished the book and was kind of like "That's it?" so I guess this book was yet another one that wasn't for me.