The inimitable and award-winning voice of Louise Erdrich is back, and this time she is taking on a tumultuous year with the help of a lovable, quirky cast of characters. An unexpected ghost story that is both a timely novel with laugh-out-loud moments as well as a beautiful commentary on identity. Erdrich cements herself as one of America’s greatest living authors.
"Dazzling. . . . A hard-won love letter to readers and to booksellers, as well as a compelling story about how we cope with pain and fear, injustice and illness. One good way is to press a beloved book into another's hands. Read The Sentence and then do just that."—USA Today, Four Stars
In this New York Times bestselling novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors.
Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.
The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.
Louise Erdrich, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, is the award-winning author of many novels as well as volumes of poetry, children’s books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.
That line, History will always find you, comes from the poem, “Break My Heart”, by former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, and it’s included in the collection An American Sunrise. If you’re new to poetry — or coming back to it — Harjo’s wonderful work is a great place to start, along with collections by […]
Paperbacks versus hardcovers has long been a hot topic in the book community. “Hardcovers are harder to damage,” some might say. While others might argue that the lightness of paperbacks make them the best option for reading enjoyment, I must admit that I’ve been someone who waffles between the two, mostly because I’m an impatient […]
From a book on our Discover Prize Shortlist to another on the Longlist for the National Book Awards year’s favorite mysteries and so many in between, this has been a great year for Indigenous voices. While we are focusing on the current books by native authors, we’d be remiss if we didn’t include other fantastic […]
Maybe you’re wondering exactly what to get the reader in your family, or maybe you’re trying to figure out exactly which books should be gaining those coveted slots on your holiday wishlist. Well, we’d like to do what we can to help out. Earlier in the year we talked about why paperbacks are the superior […]
Other books mentioned in this episode: To Paradise by Hanya YanigaharaThe Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley RobinsonThe Master by Colm ToibinThe Bostonians by Henry JamesSwann’s Way: In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 1 by Marcel Proust, translated by Lydia DavisThe Summer Book by Tove JanssonThe True Deceiver by Tove JanssonHow to Get Filthy […]