The Sentence audiobook

The coronavirus pandemic is still raging away and God knows we’ll be reading novels about it for years, but Louise Erdrich’s “The Sentence” may be the best one we ever get. Neither a grim rehashing of the lockdown nor an apocalyptic exaggeration of the virus, her book offers the kind of fresh reflection only time can facilitate, and yet it’s so current the ink feels wet.Such is the mystery of Erdrich’s work, and “The Sentence” is among her most magical novels, switching tones with the felicity of a mockingbird. She notes that the Native American language of her ancestors “includes intricate forms of human relationships and infinite ways to joke,” and she fully explores that spectrum in these pages: A zany crime caper gives way to the horrors of police brutality; lives ruined flip suddenly into redemption; the deaths of half-a-million Americans play out while a grumpy ghost causes mischief. But the abiding presence here is love.And books — so many books. This is a novel packed to its spine with other books. I was keeping track of each one mentioned until I discovered Erdrich’s appendix, which lists more than 150 beloved titles. Be prepared: “The Sentence” is that rare novel about the life-transforming effect of literature that arrives with its own. . . . To read the rest of this review, go to The Washington Post:https://www.washingtonpost.com/entert...

It was like the beginning of every show where the streets empty and something terrifying emerges from mist or fire. --------------------------------------- I passed streams of people with signs, packs, water bottles. I passed squad cars and squadrons. I passed burnt-out stores with walls like broken teeth. I passed a woman with a shopping cart full of children. Down another street, a giant tank was rumbling forward. I turned to get out of the way. Pockets of peace then smoking ruins, then tanks and full-out soldiers in battle gear. I got a cold, sick feeling, and I knew there would be deaths down the road. Bless me, Father, for I have read. It has been three weeks since I began reading. I am only sorry that I came to the end and could read no more. But I promise to avoid the occasion of reading… this book again, well for a while, anyway. Louise Erdrich – Image from MPR news – by Dawn Villella | AP Photo fileThere is magic to be had in the Catholic sacrament of confession. Confess your sins to an invisible presence across a visually impenetrable screen, let the priest know you are truly sorry, promise to do the penance you are assigned (and actually do it. Depending on the severity of one’s sins, this sentence is usually of the parking-ticket-fine level, typically saying a number of Hail Marys and Our Fathers.) and, after a few traditional, if not necessarily magical words, your sins are erased, at least in the eyes of an even more invisible, all-powerful deity. Sins, forgiveness (or not) and redemption all figure large in Louise Erdrich’s seventeenth, and latest novel, The Sentence. The sentences are a bit more significant than the penances doled out in confession.We meet Tookie, an immature thirty-something, early on. A friend manipulates her into stealing her dead-boyfriend’s body, and bringing it back to her. This bit of Keystone Kops body-snatching has the ill-fortune of involving the crossing of state lines…and the corpus delecti had some extra baggage. Her so-called friend throws her under the bus and Tookie is sentenced to 60 years, by a judge who would be right at home in the Kyle Rittenhouse case. A teacher of hers sends her a dictionary when she is in prison, and Tookie spends her time in lockup reading as much as she can. When she gets out, well short of the max sentence, she goes to every bookstore in Minneapolis with her resume and, finding the one where the dictionary-teacher is working, is taken on. This is not just any old bookstore, but a barely-bothered-to-try-disguising-it simulacrum of Louie Erdrich’s Minneapolis shop, Birchbark Books. With her love of reading, Tookie fits right in, becoming a professional bookseller, and thrives. Birchbark books storefront – image from the BB siteLouise Erdrich has made a career writing about the contemporary world in light of the history of indigenous people, how the past continues to impact the present. One might even say to haunt it. The hauntings in The Sentence continue that focus, but add a more immediate presence.There is just one problem at Tookie’s job. In 2019, four years after she starts, a frequent-flyer of a customer, both engaging (Tookie’s favorite, even) and very annoying, Flora, has passed on, but does not seem to accept this. She sustains enough mobile ectoplasm to make her presence known as she haunts the bookshop. The central mystery of the story is why. Like many who shop at this Indigenous-oriented emporium, Flora seemed a wannabe Indian. Claims some native blood, and did a fair bit to walk the walk. But she never seemed quite the genuine article to folks at the store. For reasons unknown, Flora’s ghost seems to have fixated on Tookie, bugging her more than other store employees, making noises, knocking books off shelves, and worse. I had always wanted to write a ghost story. There’s this anomaly, “I don’t really believe in ghosts,” but I knew people who had inexplicable experiences and would not admit—as I would not—to believing in ghosts. I sometimes would take a poll when I was doing a reading and I would ask everyone in the audience if they believed in ghosts. Very few hands would come up. And then I would ask, “Have you had an experience or know someone who has had an experience with a ghost?” and almost every hand would go up. We do have some residual sense of the energy of people who are no longer living. They are living in some way. - from the PW interviewA handcrafted canoe hangs from Birchbark’s ceiling - Credit...Jenn Ackerman for The New York TimesIt becomes a challenge, figuring out how to cope with this unwanted visitor. Why was she there, in the bookstore in particular, and what would it take to get her to leave? Flora had been found with an open book, a very old journal, The Sentence: An Indian Captivity 1862-1883. The book seems to be implicated in Flora’s passing. Tookie tries to figure out if the book had a role to play in Flora’s death. There might be a perilous sentence in the book. But Flora is not the only unwelcome intruder. Erdrich gives us a look at what life in Minneapolis, and her bookstore, was like (and may be again) paralleling Flora’s growing intrusiveness with the COVID rampup in 2019 and lockdown of 2020. Figuring out how to cope with COVID, both personally and professionally, adds a major layer of challenge. A very present, you-are-there, account of empty streets, closed shops and short supplies, adds to the haunted feel of the entire city during the lockdown. (“This is the first book I have ever written in real time.“) Sometimes late at night the hospital emitted thin streams of mist from the cracks along its windows and between the bricks. They took the shapes of spirits freed from bodies. The hospital emitted ghosts. The world was filling with ghosts. We were a haunted country in a haunted world. And then there was George Floyd. Floyd was hardly the first (even in recent history), minority person murdered by police, but what set his example above so many others was the precise documentation of his killing. Also, not alone in current near-history, but the straw that broke the camel’s back, in a way. The outrage that has followed has been driven not just by the phone-videos that now have become commonplace, but by the long history of the same events that lacked such undeniable evidence. The annihilation of native people by Westerners is of a cloth, if at a much greater and intentionally genocidal level. It is amazing there is room enough left for living people with all the ghosts that must be wandering about.The confessional - image from MapQuest – This part of the store figures in the taleTookie is our focus throughout, with occasional side-trips to other POVs. Her journey from convict to bookseller, from criminally-minded to good egg, from single to paired up. Hers is a later-in-life-than-usual coming of age. You will like her. She starts out with edge, though, which you may or may not care for. I am an ugly woman. Not the kind of ugly that guys write or make movies about, where suddenly I have a blast of instructional beauty. I am not about teachable moments. Nor am I beautiful on the inside. I enjoy lying, for instance, and am good at selling people useless things for prices they cannot afford. Of course, now that I am rehabilitated, I only sell words. Collections of words between cardboard covers. Books contain everything worth knowing except what ultimately matters. In case you are wondering what that final line means, even Erdich is not sure. Tookie may not have been the most glorious flower in the bouquet, but she still has considerable appeal. In addition to being smart and creative, being willing to learn, to grow and to repent her sins are among her finer qualities.The cast of supporting characters is wonderful, per usual. Pollux is Tookie’s other half, well, maybe more than a half, as he totes along with him an adolescent niece in need of parents. He is a bona fide good man, although he has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to believing in ghosts. One of the truly lovely elements of the book is how Tookie and Pollux express their love for each other through food. His niece, Hetta, is, well, an adolescent, so the emotional interactions can be…um…lively. The shop crew are a fun lot, ranging in age and interests, and we get a look at some of the sorts of customers who patronize a shop that specializes in indigenous-related material. One other supporting cast member is the bookstore’s owner, a famous writer, referred to only as “Louise.” Erdrich has a bit of fun with this, giving herself some wonderful, LOL lines, and letting us in on some of her life under a bookshop-owner’s hat.image from KARE 11 - Credit: Heidi WigdahlOne tidbit I found interesting from my wanderings through things Erdrich is that she writes to a title, that is, the title is the first element of her books, and the rest is built around that. She first came up with the title for this one in 2014. I gathered extraordinary sentences. healing sentences, sentences that were so beautiful that they brought people solace and comfort, also sentences for incarcerated people. - from the Book LaunchAt some point the weight of her accumulated material justified beginning to flesh it out. This happened in 2019. I did not find any intel on just how many titles she carries about with her at a given moment, or what was the longest gap between title idea and deciding to write the book.Bottom line is that when you see the name Louise Erdrich on a book, you can count on it being an excellent read. You can count on there being compelling contemporary stories, engaging characters, and a connection with the history of indigenous people. You can count on there being some magical realism. In this one, there is a powerful motif of sins in need of forgiveness. Mistakes need correcting, penance needs to be done, and redemption is a worthy, if not always an attainable goal. The Sentence asks how we can come to grips with the ghosts of the past, and cope with the sins of the present while mass-producing the specters of the future.Protesters gathered at Chicago Ave. and East 38 th Street in South Minneapolis after the death of George Floyd - image and text from Minneapolis Star TribuneAt the end of the sacrament of Confession, the priest says, “I absolve thee from thy sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” If only forgiveness were all that was needed. Read two literary novels, one thriller, a memoir and a non-fiction, and sin no more. Many books and movies had in their plots some echoes of my secret experiences with Flora. Places haunted by unquiet Indians were standard. Hotels were disturbed by Indians whose bones lay underneath the basements and floors—a neat psychic excavation of American unease with its brutal history. Plenty of what was happening to me happened in fiction. Unquiet Indians. What about unquiet settlers? Unquiet wannabes?...Maybe the bookstore was located on some piece of earth crossed by mystical lines. Review posted – November 19, 2021Publication date – November 9, 2021 This review has been cross-posted on my site, Coot’s Reviews. Stop by and say Hi!=============================EXTRA STUFFLinks to the author’s personal and FB pages. Erdrich's personal site redirects to the site Birchbark Books. She owns the store. There really is a confessional there. According to the store’s FAQ page, it was renamed a “forgiveness booth” after it was rescued from becoming a bar fixture.A GHOST LIVES IN HER CREAKY OLD HOUSEThis is Erdrich’s seventeenth novel, among many other works. She won the National Book Award for The Round House, the National Book Critics Circle Award for LaRose and Love Medicine, and the Pulitzer Prize for The Night Watchman, among many other recognitions. Her familiarity with cultural mixing is personal, her mother being an Ojibwe tribal leader and her father being a German-American. Familiarity with both native spirituality and western religion also stems from her upbringing. She was raised Catholic.Interviews----- Louise Erdrich: The Sentence Book Launch Conversation by Anthony Ceballos-----PBS - Louise Erdrich’s ‘The Sentence’ explores racial tensions in a divided Minneapolis-----Publisher’s Weekly - A Ghost Persists: PW Talks with Louise Erdrich by Marian PeralesOther Louise Erdrich novels I have reviewed-----2020 - The Night Watchman-----2017 - Future Home of the Living God-----2016 - LaRose -----2010 - Shadow Tag-----2012 - The Round House -----2008 - The Plague of Doves -----2005 - The Painted DrumSongs/Music-----Johnny Cash - Ain’t No Grave - Flora plays this while haunting TookieItems of Interest-----NY Times - Where to Find Native American Culture and a Good Read By J. D. Biersdorfer-----Twin Cities Daily Planet - After 17 years Birchbark Books continues to center Native stories, space amid society of erasure By Camille Erickson | April 27, 2017-----The Catholic Crusade - the traditional Act of Contrition

Sentence , a word of multiple meanings - the sentence that the main character, an ex con named Tookie serves in jail, the sentences in this book and the so many other books mentioned here, (thankfully Erdrich gave us a list at the end), the sentences the characters sometimes impose on themselves . The story is haunting, literally because the ghost who comes to the book store where Tookie works, haunting because of things in the past of the characters, the history of indigenous people, haunting in the present of the country with Covid, the killing of George Floyd, with pervasive racism. It’s also a beautiful tribute to books and people who love reading, independent bookstores (not just any bookstore, but Louise Erdrich’s bookstore) https://birchbark books.com/pages/our-storyI thought it was a good way to mark National Native American Heritage Month by reading a book by Louise Erdrich . (https://nativeamericanheritagemonth.gov/ ) Actually any time is a good time to read a Louise Erdrich book. I received a copy of this book from HarperCollins through Edelweiss.

“From the time of birth to the time of death, every word you utter is part of one long sentence” —Sun Yung Shin, ‘Unbearable Splendor’Louise Erdrich’s lyrical tribute to life-love-marriage-friendship-Indigenous identity- history-death-and literature is a very precious gift….with an excellent list of books included….. ….It’s magical - with colorful characters - creative storytelling - delicious dialogue….it’s timely, relevant, hopeful and spiritual.On top of being a creative clever ghost-style-examination of 2019 and 2020, it’s also an impressivebook lovers reference. My desired books to-read grew substantially longer. I plan to buy the hard copy today ….making it ‘hands-easier’ to open and dive into that phenomenal favorite book list recommended by Tookie. A few excerpts: “I am an ugly woman. Not the kind of ugly the guys write or make movies about, where suddenly I have a blast of blinding instructional beauty. I am not about teachable moments. Nor am I beautiful on the inside. I enjoy lying, for instance, and I am good at selling people useless things for prices they can’t afford. Of course, now that I am rehabilitated, I only sell words. Collection of words between cardboard covers”. “Books contain everything worth knowing except what ultimately matters”. “But Tookie! Listen. Clearly. Listen! Clearly!” “I focused elsewhere. The stroking was so nice. Finally she coaxed my gaze to her and spoke as though I was the unreasonable child”. “So, Tookie, honey? Mara and Budgie relapsed together and he died. If you wear a nice dress? She’ll let you put him in the back of your truck”. “What exactly do you mean, giving back to nature?” “We don’t use chemicals, I said. It’s all biodegradable”. “What then?” “A return to the earth. As our psycho-spirituality intended. Thus our name: Earth to Earth. And trees. We surround the loved one with trees. So that a grove springs up. Our motto: Graves to Groves. You can go there and meditate”. “Where’s this place?” “In the fullness of time, I will take you there. For the present, I need to assist Budgie in beginning his journey. Can you show me where he reposed?” “I cringed at the word ‘repose’—over-the-top smarm? But Mara was already showing me the way”. Ha…. I looked up different uses for the word *repose*— I concluded I *repose* every time I step into my warm hot pool. Tookie, Pollux, Hetta, Flora, Asema…. and others who rounded out the cast, made this book delightful!!!Soulful, insightful, funny, refreshingly revealing, illuminating!!!This novel is marvelous….really extraordinary. Adding to my half dozen favorite books all year…. and another Erdrich novel-favorite!

Erdrich is a master of prose. Her characters are both complex and real. Her stories layered with rich native culture.Tookie is a quirky if not whacky but endearing character. After serving her sentence for a crime she didn’t think was a crime, but just helping out a friend and then framed for it, she goes to work in a bookstore. There is the magnetic pull, my fellow GR peeps.The other characters, well, I would characterize them as misfits. But memorable ones who love the written word. Even a ghost, who lingers in the bookstore unsettling Tookie daily. A Foretelling of the foreboding: Covid is about to arrive. The death of George Floyd.The overall mystique of the novel is woven with dark humour, sadness; grief; but an abundance of love, hope and healing.The Sentence is a brilliant title. Encapsulating the jail time Tookie did and the beautiful sentences from various novels.The prologue serves as reference for Tookie’s favourite reads. This was a riveting one.4.5⭐️

Now shortlisted for the 2022 Women’s Prize.This is the first book I have read by Louise Erdich who I have seen described as something of a national treasure in America. She who won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2021 for her previous novel “The Night Watchman” - a prize which of course like most US books prizes excludes any non-American authors (presumably for the same reason that Americans play club team sports that no one else plays so they can claim to be world champions). Now that novel was barely reviewed in the mainstream literary reviewing media in the UK - which in some ways is a puzzle but which I think may be because stories about prejudices against indigenous people do not resonate as well as books about say slavery and its aftermath. I would also have to say that reading this novel - which I largely enjoyed - I noted firstly that (to me like so many literary American novels) the world outside the US barely exists (other interestingly than in the large number of non-American authors mentioned) and secondly that the novel seemed to me very American - almost as if I was slightly excluded from what it took for granted.I would also say though that the book reminded me in some - not all aspects - of the most recent writings of Ali Smith: the Seasonal Quartet and particularly Companion Piece) and I have always thought that a non-UK reader cannot really fully understand Smith’s writing.In terms of similarity to Smith’s writing I would say: in its sometimes seemingly randomly scattered multiple storylines (and side stories) which somehow converge; in its blend of the very real and immediate with the fey/timeshifting (Smith) or indigenous belief/folklore (Erdich); in the way in which it, not always entirely successfully but still admirably, feeds in an almost instantaneous lived-through experience of current political events, alongside its storyline - a tendency which gives the books an urgent immediacy albeit it will be interesting to revisit them in say 10 years and see if they have retained a legacy.I would say though that one difference could be characterised as that while Smith plays with language, Erdich’s focus in more on literature. The story starts with a rather odd prologue: the main character Tookie (a Native American who narrates most but not quite all of the book in the first person) tells of her arrest and imprisonment in 2005 (while in her thirties) for the rather bizarre crime of drug smuggling - bizarre because the drugs were concealed (by someone else) in the armpits of a dead body she transports for slightly obscure reasons between two girlfriends of the dead man. This episode seems to serve a number of purposes (which I cannot help thing might have largely been achieved with a slightly less odd crime): to introduce the subject of death and its aftermath and affect both on those left behind and those who have died; to allow Tookie to encounter (and have a formative experience) with Pollux, the Tribal Policeman that arrests her; to highlight how the anti-black bias of the American Justice system is matched (it not outweighed) by its bias against indigenous peoples; to place Tookie under the book’s first (of many) Sentences - the book’s title is the only place where I felt wordplay came into effect; to allow Tookie to grow in literary confidence via a dictionary gifted to her by her old English teacher (and unofficial school guardian/mentor) and by extensive reading while under that sentence.The majority of the book takes place over the period November 2 2019 to November 2 2020 - and to be honest for some time felt like a different book. I am aware that most Americans drive automatics so I guess it makes sense that authors struggle with gear shifts? Tookie (by now released from prison and married to Pollux) has taken a job at a Minnesota bookshop, a bookshop which is, to all intents and purposes, the real life Birchbark bookshop (complete with birchbark canoe, confessional booth and a speciality in Indigenous books and art) run by Louise Erdich - who rather cleverly I felt appears as a side character in her own book. One of the bookshop’s most notorious customers Flora - a wannabe Indigenous - has died but continues to visit the store as a ghost, her presence known largely to Tookie. Flora we find, via her daughter, died reading a book called “The Sentence: An Indian Captivity” and Tookie comes to believe that one sentence in the book From there the book interleaves (sometimes I have to say rather awkwardly) a number of strands:Observational humour and insight on running a bookshopComments on literature - the bookshop workers commonly recommending books to or discussing them with their customersObservations on life as a native American in modern America - and in particular on interactions with non-indigenous people, including those who believe firmly they are not just empathetic to your plight but even (like Flora) somehow are part of it.Indigenous and tribal customs, beliefs and folklore, particularly around death - I must admit that I admired the concepts of these sections a lot more than I either really understood or enjoyed them Tookie’s relationship with Pollux and with his brother’s rebellious daughter Hetta (who regards Pollux as her Dad) - Hetta arrives with a baby and also with another rather bizarre storyline about a shameful part she took in a film.The lived experience of the pandemic - I must admit I struggled for different reasons to identify with these sections as they really did not match my UK experience of strict and lengthy complete lockdowns. Partly this is because (and this was clearly an important moment for the author as she has herself - as character - remark on it) the bookshop manages to get its staff identified as a critical workers - but even putting this to one side characters seem largely free to move around in a way only possible in the UK if you were one of the people setting the lockdown rules and thus (it seems in your own head if not according to the law) exempt from them.Political commentary - as the City of Minnesota is torn apart by the George Floyd murder (which happened in the town)A combined ghost and mystery story as Tookie seeks to understand why Flora is haunting her - and eventually discovers (via it has to be said a set of connections which for me were both obscurely supernaturally and heavily coincidental) not just that but something more of her own identity (this latter involves yet another of the clunky gear shifts).Overall this is an ambitious and very different, if far from perfect book which makes an interesting addition to the longlist.