The Sentence
by Louise Erdrich
What first drew me into The Sentence, the latest novel by Pulitzer-Prize-winner Louise Erdrich, was the witty, streetwise voice of Tookie, the Ojibwe protagonist and main narrator. We learn that Tookie spent time in prison, after a tragi-comic mishap that saw her transport the body of her dead lover over state lines with, unbeknownst to her, a stash of drags stuck under his armpits. In prison, she discovers books and learns to love them and once discharged, marries Pollux, the tribal cop who arrested her, and lands a job at an Indigenous bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota. All seems great, except that the bookshop – and Tookie in particular – is haunted by the ghost of Flora who, in her lifetime, was a quasi-obsessive customer of the store. Flora was a white woman with a keen interest in Indigenous culture, who made it her life project to prove her Indian antecedents. Pretty soon, the terrors of a ghostly visitant are replaced (or rather, accompanied) by more immediate horrors – the onset of the Covid pandemic, the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin, the ensuing incendiary riots and, in the final pages, the divisive Presidential election of 2020. All this takes its toll on Tookie and her complex relationship with Pollux.
The supernatural is a key element of The Sentence. A haunting lies at its heart, Pollux is described as a performer of Indian ceremonial rituals, and there’s even a sub-plot involving a Rugaroo, the French-Canadian/Indian equivalent of a werewolf (or loup-garou). Yet, despite my love for horror and the Gothic, this is the aspect of The Sentence which least engaged me. Indeed, after my initial enthusiasm for the novel, life (and other books) got in the way, and I found it quite hard to return to it. My interest was piqued again when I got to the more topical “state of the nation” parts. Erdrich is herself an Ojibwe from her mother’s side, and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a bookstore and showcase for Native culture in Minneapolis. Unsurprisingly, the descriptions of the daily operations of the fictional bookshop, the impact of the pandemic and the BLM protests have an authentic and edgy feel to them. I also felt that the introduction of Hetta, Tookie’s stepdaughter, and her baby son Jarvis, gave the novel a more personal, intimate feel which it lacked in its first part.
The
Sentence is, perhaps, too ambitious.
It tries to be too many things at once – a comic crime caper to start
with; then a work of supernatural fiction; finally, a topical family drama. Despite my reservations it is, however, a work
I would recommend. Ultimately, The
Sentence, is a paean to books. Books
help us to understand the world; they serve as a bridge to “the other”, and often
act as “life support”. No wonder that
the novel ends with a “totally biased list” of “Tookie’s” favourite books. Are they, perhaps, the authors’ favourites
too?
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