The Sentence: A Novel by Louise Erdrich

Patti: Tookie, a Native American woman living in Minneapolis, is arrested for stealing a corpse. Plus, said corpse had crack cocaine hidden in his armpits. After ten years in prison reading voraciously, Tookie lands a job at an independent bookstore and marries her arresting officer, Pollux. Then her most annoying customer, Flora, who wishes that she herself were Native American, dies. All is well, but things have to start going awry or we don’t have a story worth telling. Flora’s ghost haunts the bookstore, George Floyd is murdered, and Covid-19 causes life as we know it to grind to a halt. Then there’s the double meaning of the title. First, Tookie has to endure a prison sentence, and Flora seems to be serving a sentence of being trapped between the land of the living and the afterlife. On the other hand, this book is largely about books, and Tookie believes that a particular sentence in a book killed Flora when she read it. As with all Erdrich novels, this one serves up a heavy dose of fascinating Native American beliefs and traditions, including how to evict a ghost. Erdrich also inhabits her own book here, as the writer who owns the bookstore. I love how she describes herself...

United States on Nov 21, 2023

Kindle Customer: I have read most of Louise Erdrich's books, and am an unabashed fan. The Sentence is right up there with her best, with a colorful and unique cast of characters, insight and sensitivity into indigenous culture and history, and a spellbinding set of interwoven stories revolving around central character Tookie. There are also autobiographical aspects of this book, as Tookie works in a bookstore specializing in an indigenous bookstore owned by a woman named Louise. Unlike most of Erdrich's books, this one is set firmly in the present, in the midst of George Floyd's murder and the ensuing riots, and the covid pandemic: how to keep the bookstore open, and to keep employees and customers safe, how to protect your household yet support your people and values. Meanwhile, the bookstore becomes haunted by a former customer who won't stay dead, and who threatens Tookie. Woven in is Tookie's complicated love story and history with her husband, Pollux, a retired policeman who arrested Tookie years earlier, resulting in a sentence that changed her life. I could not put down this book, and could relate to many of the characters in spite of our very different backgrounds and lives. This, perhaps,...

United States on Nov 01, 2023

Si.Andrade: Entrega rápida, ainda não terminei de ler o livro mas estou adorando.

Brazil on Nov 01, 2023

Tracy Brown: This book was a book group selection. So the title is enticing, I wouldn’t have picked it up to read it. It’s set in a bookstore, a small town bookstore in Minnesota. The staff are quirky and fun. They’re also very serious and intense people. But full of faith in the universe. I liked them. I don’t know if this is a weird pool though but the chairs hurt. The chairs that were available are either full sun or no sun outside. They have a little bit of sun, but you have to go all the way both corners you know to get in the pool and and that when you’re like in behind the island over there and then you take like go through a little narrow passageway, so I finally settled on here go to work I guess I particularly love the protagonist- she’s my kind of girl.

Her husband Pollux is a hero of sorts to me. He is a native American, a city Indian, but one who found his path to being an Indian through an uncle, who trained him in the ways of his people. He keeps his community together through his rituals and his love. His daughter Hetty, comes home, bringing a baby boy with her just before the COVID-19 pandemic hits. She stays with her dad and stepmother for the next year or...

United States on May 14, 2023

MM Reviewer: ‘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.

A rather unusual story that is multi-layered, haunting, and perceptive and combines a lighthearted ghost story with a woman rebuilding her life after being freed from prison. Then add a heavy dose of Covid reality and a shifting political world, and you have the makings of an excellent story that embraces literature and the healing power of books. Haunting, passionate, relevant, and incredibly atmospheric.

The Plot - Tookie is released from prison after years of incarceration for naively recovering the corpse of her friend’s husband. Except the body carried something valuable to some but illegal – which was cocaine. Not able to provide any meaningful defence Tookie is imprisoned where she ignites her passion for books and literature. After many unsuccessful appeals, Tookie is finally freed, marries Pollux, and sets up a bookshop. However, the bookshop is haunted by the ghostly presence of one of its former...

United Kingdom on Feb 09, 2023

Sriramya: A must read, the author captures every bit of pandemic, ghost in pandemic and the struggles of daily life in the USA as a colored person. A must read for people who love to read new novels in our time!

India on Feb 02, 2023

Vanya Jaiswal: The Sentence is a book that recommends itself by virtue of the sheer number of books it refers to within its narrative universe. And once the plot is wrapped up, there are another 4 pages—front and back—worth of book lists to satiate the nerd in you.

Louise Erdrich knows what she’s doing - after all her protagonist Tookie is a bookseller who works at an independent bookstore that specialises in Indigenous books.

Before Tookie was a bookseller though, she was incarcerated for a crime both ridiculous and shocking, but one ultimately steeped in innocence. But the odds are not in her favour as Tookie is an Indigenous American and therefore she is firmly placed “on the wrong side of the statistics.” However, it is not her carceral experience that forms the cornerstone of the novel. Instead, Erdrich focuses on Tookie’s life after her release from the prison.

The bookstore is where the real action of the novel unfolds. After an ardent customer named Flora dies, she comes back to haunt the place. Tookie realises quickly that the ghost’s wanderings and persistent tantrums are targeted towards her. Coincidentally, Flora’s living presence was just as much...

India on Jul 28, 2022

Bhavna Joshi: रस निष्पत्ति - भयानक 🥶, अद्भुत😯 (in readers)
भाव निर्मिति - शोक😔, भय 😨( in characters)

"Mom did you see a ghost"

"OMG where did you catch that word. No, nothing like that exist"

"But yesterday you only said that ghost of past have caught us humans in this pandemic.
What does that mean"

Woops🤪
A conversation with a friend introduced my lil one to the extreme end of human existence, while also bringing up the realization to me that indeed Ghost, & mysteries around them form the divide between existential & conjectural

This book with its simple & yet highly complex title introduced me to the mayhem of this world

Though the book is conglomeration of infinite, grammatically astute sentences but the story written by these sentences is only that of Tookie, a naive woman of Ojibwa tribe
Its about Tookie's tryst with weird facets of life

From stealing a corpse for her friend, to carving a new life by working in a bookstore. From conversing with the ghost of dead irritating customer, Flora to forming human bonds with her step...

India on Jun 26, 2022