The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
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The Sentence
By Louise Erdrich
HarperCollins, 2021
Readers familiar with Louise Erdrich’s biography will quickly notice the similarities between her life and the details of her new novel The Sentence. Erdrich lives in Minneapolis, the novel is set in Minneapolis. Erdrich owns a bookstore that specializes in Native American books and art, the novel is set in a bookstore that specializes in Native American books and art. Erdrich was deeply affected by the murder of George Floyd and confused and terrified by the COVID-19 pandemic and so are the very bookish women who work in the bookstore. They find solace and peace in their heritage, books, and in each other.
Erdrich, who won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Night Watchman, uses her books to explore the struggles of Native Americans past and present and to celebrate Native American culture. Those themes serve as the framework of The Sentence. The plot of The Sentence focuses on an Ojibwe woman named Tookie through whom Erdrich tells the story. Tookie is an excon and recovering drug addict who is married to the retired Potawatamie cop who arrested her and sent her to prison. She is a voracious reader who gets a job in the bookstore through one of her old teachers who kept in touch while Tookie was in prison. Readers are privy to Tookie’s thoughts as she navigates her relationships with her husband Pollux, his niece who moves in with them, her quirky, sometimes helpful coworkers, the demanding customers who rely on her for book recommendations, and a ghost. She loves books, she loves her job, and she loves her husband. Her life is comfortable and happy, but she does not trust herself to keep things that way. When one of Tookie’s most irritating customers dies and begins to haunt the bookstore her life is thrown out of balance. The trauma caused by the murder of George Floyd, the subsequent protests, and the COVID-19 pandemic threaten to spin her life out of control.
There are times when it seems like the events of 2020 will take over the novel, but Erdrich always brings the action back to the bookstore, its employees, and to Tookie. Erdrich uses each of her character’s individual stories of past trauma and loss to describe their varied and nuanced responses to the events of 2020. Tookie is the only one of them who has failed to come to terms with her past and her failure to do so endangers the life she has built since leaving prison.
Despite the heavy subject matter, The Sentence is not a heavy book. Tookie’s pessimistic sense of humor provides comic relief and a scene in which she attempts to bake cookies (a hammer is involved) is truly funny. Erdrich even pokes a little self- aware fun at writers who write about themselves. Erdrich is a close observer of the natural world and beautiful descriptions of nature like this one can be found throughout The Sentence: “In October the sky recedes to a backdrop. The brilliance on earth gathers. The trees are incendiary. Crowns of gold and carmine.” There are also lovely passages describing moments of deep emotion. This kind of writing can be risky, but Erdrich handles it deftly by having Tookie narrate her story. During an embrace with her husband, Tookie says, “I let myself flow into Pollux. I felt his heartbeat at my breast, felt my way along the paths inside him, lightless. If I stepped off a cliff in that heart of his, he’d catch me.” Later during a demonstration connected to the protests following George Floyd’s death Tookie describes the transcendent experience brought on by watching her niece perform a traditional dance: “What flowed over me was not easy to feel and I resisted, but the ripple of energy caught me up and spread, became wide, powerful, deep, musical, whole, universal: it was the drum . . . . I kept dancing. I saw spots and lights, nearly fainted, but still I danced, on and on.” The writing throughout The Sentence is consistently masterful.
There is a lot going on in The Sentence. There is a ghost story, flashback inducing descriptions of the events of 2020, and a large cast of characters that Erdrich uses to explore the different ways in which people are haunted by their pasts as well as the ways that making peace with the past while preserving tradition can heal old wounds. And almost every chapter contains references to books and authors. There is even a list of Tookie’s book recommendations at the end of the novel. The Sentence is a beautiful and moving tribute to love, heritage, community, and most of all words and books. It is a book that inspires hope. These days that is a real achievement.
—Brian Bruce is the author of Thomas Boyd: Lost Author of the Lost Generation and a retired teacher who talks about books at Bookish: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrrFo3tDRDVbX7PZjWx1qYA