Thursday, December 19, 2013

Booktalk


   The Round House by Louise Erdrich is a spot-on coming-of-age novel that is forced into fast-forward by issues larger than teenage ones. The author does not blink as rape and injustice surge into the story along with hormones. In fact, Erdrich walks both sides of that plunging and soaring line between adolescent and adulthood with poignancy and power.

    The protagonist, a reservation Native American, grows up quickly before us as he crashes into the complexity and cruelty of of his world when his mother is raped. His relationship with his father, a reservation judge, ricochets from respect to frustration, anger to fear, as they both navigate the the path between revenge and justice. Erdrich’s triumph, however, is how she deftly weaves the damaged history of Native American legal abuse into the story as an accomplice to the crime in the same manner that Harper Lee shaped her story within the cruel fist of prejudice.

    I also enjoyed how she moves so easily between the concrete immediate world of her characters and the mystic world of legends, ghosts, and Native American stories that inform the plot with fore-shadowing, metaphors, and always, beautiful language. At every point in the novel, I felt I was in the hands of a story-teller who would not betray the integrity of the plot she was creating. She did not.

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