The Sentence

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Tookie, Pollux, Hetta, Flora, Asema…. and others who rounded out the cast, made this book delightful!!! The most recent recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in fiction—for The Night Watchman (2020)—turns her eye to various kinds of hauntings, all of which feel quite real to the affected characters.

https://www.france24.com/fr/info-en-continu/20231106-le-prix-femina-remis-%C3%A0-neige-sinno-pour-triste-tigre Strange, enchanting and funny: a work about motherhood, doom, regret and the magic – dark, benevolent and every shade in between – of words on paper’ New York Times In addition to fiction and poetry, Erdrich has published nonfiction. The Blue Jay's Dance (1995) is about her pregnancy and the birth of her third child. [42] Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (2003) traces her travels in northern Minnesota and Ontario's lakes following the birth of her youngest daughter. [43] Influence and style [ edit ] 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.The Sentence is definitely character driven. We will meet Pollux' complicated daughter as well as Tookie's fellow workers at the store. And with every opportunity around every corner, Erdrich will insert matters for the mind. As other readers of this novel will tell you, early 2020 with the pandemic in full force and the riots after the murder of George Floyd will leave a bitter ache. Walking through the streets of these events, especially with the pandemic still in our midst, is going to be heavy and heartbreaking. But it's all part of Tookie's existence at the time as well. Louise Erdrich’s lyrical tribute to life-love-marriage-friendship-Indigenous identity- history-death-and literature is a very precious gift…. Tookie's struggles with her ghost are very much on her mind -- but so is a great deal else; The Sentence is a fairly busy book.

LE: That just landed in my consciousness. I wrote it down and then thought, Oh, I have to think about this. Why am I writing this? And Tookie’s character emerged. Have you ever had that moment of transformation from reading a book…or experienced the glow from having recommended a transformative book? The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year by Louise Erdrich". www.publishersweekly.com. n.d . Retrieved May 13, 2023.One 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. Vanguard, The Patriotic (December 2, 2021). "2021 Pulitzer prize winner Louise Erdrich". The Patriotic Vanguard . Retrieved December 29, 2022. When I found out about the prize I was living on a farm in New Hampshire near the college I'd attended," Erdrich told an interviewer. "I was nearly broke and driving a car with bald tires. My mother knitted my sweaters, and all else I bought at thrift stores ... The recognition dazzled me. Later, I became friends with Studs Terkel and Kay Boyle, the judges, toward whom I carry a lifelong gratitude. This prize made an immense difference in my life." [27]

LH: Flora is a customer you depict as loyal but hugely annoying, at least to Tookie. Flora dies with a book in her hand and goes on to torment Tookie by haunting the store. Is Flora based on a customer you’ve met in real life? She comes to work in a bookstore -- owned by a woman named Louise (and, yes, that clearly is the author, and the bookstore naturally resembles her own) -- which is certainly a good fit, and a good environment for her. It’s about a lot of other things, too: the pandemic, and being a Native person in America, and the carceral state, and perhaps especially books. But what strikes me the most about The Sentence, here as we prepare to enter the third year of the Covid-19 pandemic, surrounded by loss, is how much time it devotes to the question of what we owe the dead, and whether we have failed to deliver.I decided to live for love again and take the chance of another lifetime’..... and this my friends was my favourite message from this very unique and enchanting book where sentence after sentence, word after word I became engrossed in Tookie’s story. LH: T he Sentence takes on a lot of serious topics—being in prison; the pandemic; the George Floyd murder, which took place in Minneapolis; the injustices Native Americans suffer. But it’s also a ghost story with a lot of dark humor.

The Sentence veers pretty wildly between emotional tones. Tookie’s theft of Budgie’s body is very madcap and fun, and then her early days at the bookstore are settled and restrained and slice-of-life-esque. By the time Erdrich gets into the pandemic and the protests over George Floyd’s murder, she’s writing something close to narrative nonfiction. For me, the shifting tones work because of the lightness of Erdrich’s touch. What did you think? 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”. Tookie’s courage and passion carry us; she is, throughout, a stalwart companion, facing hardship and aware of her own good fortune. “I live the way a person does who has ceased to dread each day’s ration of time,” she says – a motto to go by, surely, if we can. Erdrich is best known as a novelist, and has published a dozen award-winning and best-selling novels. [14] She followed Love Medicine with The Beet Queen (1986), which continued her technique of using multiple narrators [31] and expanded the fictional reservation universe of Love Medicine to include the nearby town of Argus, North Dakota. The action of the novel takes place mostly before World War II. Leslie Marmon Silko accused Erdrich's The Beet Queen of being more concerned with postmodern technique than with the political struggles of Native peoples. [32]a b Alexandra Alter (March 17, 2015). "Louise Erdrich Wins Library of Congress Award". The New York Times . Retrieved March 18, 2015. LE: I write first drafts in longhand. I don’t keep one book or journal; I mostly scrawl on various scraps of notebook paper scattered throughout the house. into the book and Tookie has already been to jail, gotten the bookstore job and been married. How did you find the pacing? Was the initial part rushed? Or was it simply meant to set the scene for the more recent events?