“LaRose” begins with a tragedy. In an effort to make this tragedy right, Landreaux Irons, architect of the tragedy, offers his son LaRose to the Ravitch family. The Irons and Ravitch families have a long history as Nola Ravitch and Emmaline Irons are half-sisters. Landreaux and Peter Ravitch are hunting buddies. The rest of the novel explores what happens to all of the characters’ lives as a result of this event. I struggled with this book, which isn’t often the case. The writing was done […]
The Birchbark House
I had originally read Louise Erdrich’s The Birchbark House back in June 2014 when I was looking at teaching more literature written by and about Native Americans. I decided to revisit the book because I thought it would work with a new unit I was putting together for my American Literature course. Unfortunately, I read the book too late to make into booklists for this school year. This wasn’t too much of a loss because I’m still torn about whether to actually teach it or […]
A last year’s book revisited, with splendid results
The Chancellor has chosen Louise Erdrich’s LaRose for his September book club pick, and I was really excited. I read it for CBR8 last year, and I gave it a solid 4.5 stars. I was still on a readers’ high from The Round-House, which colored my judgment of LaRose. The beauty of a re-read is that you can really dig into major themes and ideas, because you know how the book already ends. Since I reviewed this book last year, I won’t reiterate the plot […]
Instead of the language being beaten out of me, I’ve tried for years to acquire it.
I am not sure I would recommend this book to someone as a starter for Louise Erdrich. I do think I would recommend it as an interesting journey around upper Minnesota/southern Ontario/Manitoba. And I would definitely recommend it to someone seeing a somewhat more open side of Erdrich. In this short travel narrative, Louise Erdrich travels around the physical terrain of Ojibwe Country at the intersection of Manitoba, Minnesota, and Ontario, but also in the more metaphysical world of history, language, and literature. She ruminates […]