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The Plague of Doves
The unsolved murder of a farm family still haunts the white small town of Pluto, North Dakota, generations after the vengeance exacted and the distortions of fact transformed the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation.
Part Ojibwe, part white, Evelina Harp is an ambitious young girl prone to falling hopelessly in love. Mooshum, Evelina's grandfather, is a repository of family and tribal history with an all-too-intimate knowledge of the violent past. And Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, who bears witness, understands the weight of historical injustice better than anyone. Through the distinct and winning voices of three unforgettable narrators, the collective stories of two interwoven communities ultimately come together to reveal a final wrenching truth.
314 pages, Hardcover
First published April 29, 2008
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21613 people want to read
About the author
Louise Erdrich
131 books13k followersLouise Erdrich is one of the most gifted, prolific, and challenging of American novelists. Her fiction reflects aspects of her mixed heritage: German through her father, and French and Ojibwa through her mother. She is the author of many novels, the first of which, Love Medicine, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the last of which, The Round House, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 2012. She lives in Minnesota.
source: Amazon
source: Amazon
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,565 reviews
November 22, 2021
We open with a scene of mass murder. A child (Moses, Kal-El) is spared when the killer’s weapon jams. He quiets the baby with music. Violence and music permeate the following tales and only at the very end do we learn who the baby grew up to be and the identity of the killer. There are other atrocities to come. How these events came to be and the ongoing impact of time and transformation define this book.
Multiple narrators, multiple generations, much overlap between Native Americans and European settlers. This is apparently typical of her work. I began my character catalog by dividing between Native and European, but it became clear in time that there was too much intermarriage for that to be truly meaningful. I suppose one could add a “mixed-blood” section, but then what about quatroons, et al.
One narrator, Evelina, relates the stories told by her grandfather, Seraph Milk, also known as Mooshum. There are many to be told. In one striking scene, set in 1896, masses of passenger pigeons are devouring all the crops and seem biblical in their pestilential impact. Very grabbing. Other events are far too familiar, bigotry, lynching, murders, madness, greed. The characters are interesting and the stories intriguing. There are many characters and I often had trouble keeping them straight. In fact, entire train rides (I do most of my reading while commuting on the subway) were sometimes taken up with cataloguing them. This book needs a family tree illustration to help the reader keep track of the characters. (a comment I saw often repeated when I searched for information about the author on line).
There are many tales in this book, taking place over several generations in North Dakota. It is almost as if Erdrich had collected short stories and used a central core of blood relations to unite them. In fact, the acknowledgements section notes several magazines and short story collections in which parts of the book had previously appeared, lending support to that notion. I still do not know if the book was intended originally as a novel or pieced together from short stories.
So, who killed the family and who was the spared child? We get there in good time, with many side trips to the branches of the local family trees. It is a rewarding journey with stories that grab and hold on, sometimes magical language, and memorable characters.
This is a book worth re-reading. Once one has a sense of the whole, it becomes easier to pick out the elements, the relationships, the literary elements when traveling the path a second time, to see how Erdrich traces the echo of events down the corridors of time.
Highly recommended, but take your time, keep track and savor.
in trade paper - 4/23/13
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal and FB pages. Erdrich's personal site redirects to the site Birchbark Books. She owns the store.
Other Louise Erdrich novels I have reviewed
-----2021 - The Sentence
-----2020 - The Night Watchman
-----2017 - Future Home of the Living God
-----2016 - LaRose
-----2010 - Shadow Tag
-----2012 - The Round House
-----2005 - The Painted Drum
Multiple narrators, multiple generations, much overlap between Native Americans and European settlers. This is apparently typical of her work. I began my character catalog by dividing between Native and European, but it became clear in time that there was too much intermarriage for that to be truly meaningful. I suppose one could add a “mixed-blood” section, but then what about quatroons, et al.
One narrator, Evelina, relates the stories told by her grandfather, Seraph Milk, also known as Mooshum. There are many to be told. In one striking scene, set in 1896, masses of passenger pigeons are devouring all the crops and seem biblical in their pestilential impact. Very grabbing. Other events are far too familiar, bigotry, lynching, murders, madness, greed. The characters are interesting and the stories intriguing. There are many characters and I often had trouble keeping them straight. In fact, entire train rides (I do most of my reading while commuting on the subway) were sometimes taken up with cataloguing them. This book needs a family tree illustration to help the reader keep track of the characters. (a comment I saw often repeated when I searched for information about the author on line).
There are many tales in this book, taking place over several generations in North Dakota. It is almost as if Erdrich had collected short stories and used a central core of blood relations to unite them. In fact, the acknowledgements section notes several magazines and short story collections in which parts of the book had previously appeared, lending support to that notion. I still do not know if the book was intended originally as a novel or pieced together from short stories.
So, who killed the family and who was the spared child? We get there in good time, with many side trips to the branches of the local family trees. It is a rewarding journey with stories that grab and hold on, sometimes magical language, and memorable characters.
This is a book worth re-reading. Once one has a sense of the whole, it becomes easier to pick out the elements, the relationships, the literary elements when traveling the path a second time, to see how Erdrich traces the echo of events down the corridors of time.
Highly recommended, but take your time, keep track and savor.
in trade paper - 4/23/13
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal and FB pages. Erdrich's personal site redirects to the site Birchbark Books. She owns the store.
Other Louise Erdrich novels I have reviewed
-----2021 - The Sentence
-----2020 - The Night Watchman
-----2017 - Future Home of the Living God
-----2016 - LaRose
-----2010 - Shadow Tag
-----2012 - The Round House
-----2005 - The Painted Drum
November 27, 2017
Extraordinary. Erdrich uses a succession of first-person narrators that dovetail with each other beautifully, à la William Faulkner's The Hamlet. Each voice has its idiosyncrasies and slightly different vocabulary. The action is centered around the unsolved murder of a family of white farmers in the early twentieth century. Unfortunately, that evil was discovered at the time by a group of traveling Indian merchants. Only a tiny babe survived in her crib. The Indians are then summarily lynched by white vigilantes. They had nothing to do with it, of course. Erdrich then shows us how for the next 75 years or so that violent history affects both whites and Indians -- and those of mixed blood like Erdrich herself -- living in Pluto, North Dakota, and the nearby reservation. The non-chronological structure works beautifully. Erdrich writes with a precision about feelings that reminds me of the crucial distinction John Gardner famously made between "sentiment" and "sentimentality." (See his The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers) Erdrich's ability to make vivid any given scene seems akin to that of Philip Roth at his best. I make this comparison just to give you a sense of the level of mastery she is operating on here. It's plain she's studied her models well. Extraordinary piece. This is my first Erdrich so I look forward to reading more of her. Her new novel The Round House, purportedly the second volume of a planned trilogy that begins with Plague of Doves, received the 2012 National Book Award.
September 11, 2022
.
در ساحل جنوبی آتشها خاکستر میشوند، خود را در پتو میپیچم اما خوابم نمیبرد. وقتی منتظر کسی هستی، اولش هر سایهای خبر از آمدن او دارد. بعد سایهها مایهی ترس و هراست میشوند. ما به دنبال تو میگردیم، اسمت را فریاد میزنیم تا وقتی از صدایمان جز پچپچی باقی نماند. در خواب یک پیرمرد هر چیز طور دیگری میشود، آفتابی نیست و جهان عکس عقربههای ساعت میگردد که یعنی آن خواب مربوط به روح جهان است. و بعد او تو را هم در خواب میبیند که راه را اشتباه میروی.
🏕
این یکی از زیباترین رمانهایی بود که خوندم، رمان دربارهی جامعهی سرخپوسته. شخصیتهایی که در اردوگاهی زندگی میکنند و هر لحظه با اتفاقاتی مواجه میشویم که تبحر نویسنده در نوشتن یک رمان رئالیسم جادویی را به رخ ما میکشد. کتاب خطی نیست و همراهه با فلش بکهایی که به مرور متوجه روند داستان میشیم. کتاب تم جنایی داره و با قتل غمانگیز یک خانواده شروع میشه.
نامزد جایزه پولیتزر سال 2009
برنده جایزه کتاب انیسفیلد-ولف سال 2009
نامزد جایزه دیتون سال 2009
از کتاب های پرفروش نیویورک تایمز
در ساحل جنوبی آتشها خاکستر میشوند، خود را در پتو میپیچم اما خوابم نمیبرد. وقتی منتظر کسی هستی، اولش هر سایهای خبر از آمدن او دارد. بعد سایهها مایهی ترس و هراست میشوند. ما به دنبال تو میگردیم، اسمت را فریاد میزنیم تا وقتی از صدایمان جز پچپچی باقی نماند. در خواب یک پیرمرد هر چیز طور دیگری میشود، آفتابی نیست و جهان عکس عقربههای ساعت میگردد که یعنی آن خواب مربوط به روح جهان است. و بعد او تو را هم در خواب میبیند که راه را اشتباه میروی.
🏕
این یکی از زیباترین رمانهایی بود که خوندم، رمان دربارهی جامعهی سرخپوسته. شخصیتهایی که در اردوگاهی زندگی میکنند و هر لحظه با اتفاقاتی مواجه میشویم که تبحر نویسنده در نوشتن یک رمان رئالیسم جادویی را به رخ ما میکشد. کتاب خطی نیست و همراهه با فلش بکهایی که به مرور متوجه روند داستان میشیم. کتاب تم جنایی داره و با قتل غمانگیز یک خانواده شروع میشه.
نامزد جایزه پولیتزر سال 2009
برنده جایزه کتاب انیسفیلد-ولف سال 2009
نامزد جایزه دیتون سال 2009
از کتاب های پرفروش نیویورک تایمز
March 2, 2023
I think this book made some meaningful points about the nuances of familial relationships, the intergenerational pain of racism and inequity, and the perceived death of small town America. Unfortunately I just couldn’t grasp the plot solidly enough to enjoy reading The Plague of Doves. There were too many characters for me to keep track of and all the chapters felt like unconnected short stories. People seem to like and resonate with Louise Erdrich’s work so maybe I’ll try another one of her novels someday.
January 3, 2025
4/5 Estrellas
En los años finales del siglo XIX los estados Unidos de Norte América empujan con fuerza hacia el oeste de su territorio para colonizar e incorporar a la Unión los territorios del Noroeste y del medio Oeste americano.
En los años finales del siglo XIX se produjo unos de los mayores declives poblacionales de la historia. La paloma migratoria americana pasó de contar con más de 3 mil millones de ejemplares a principios de siglo a estar prácticamente extinta a finales del mismo. El título del libro quizá hace referencia a la destrucción de la última gran colonia de este ave que se produjo en 1896 y que es uno de los episodios de la infancia de uno de los personajes del libro.
Lo mismo ocurrió con el búfalo que estaba al borde de la extinción a finales del siglo XIX, contando con menos de 1000 ejemplares. Este, al menos, ha podido recuperarse y salvarse.
Estos dos animales, entre muchos otros, formaban parte de la cultura, las tradiciones y el modo de vida de los pueblos originarios americanos que, como no podía ser menos, comenzaron a ser confinados en reservas, durante este siglo de expansión, proceso que culminó a finales del siglo XIX.
Las reservas no fueron una buena idea (o si lo fueron, si lo que pretendían era quitar del mapa, asimilando o estrangulando económicamente a estas gentes). Ni los protegieron, ni preservaron la cultura, las tradiciones o la libertad de estos pueblos. Se han convertido en reductos de pobreza, siempre a merced de las agencias estatales y gubernamentales, siempre en peligro de ser expropiados de estos últimos territorios cuando se descubren las riquezas naturales que atesoran, siempre asediados por el racismo y la codicia de los colonos que se iban asentando en estos nuevos territorios.
La novela está ambientada en Dakota del Norte, en el entorno de la reserva Chippewa, una gran tribu cuyo mayor número de habitantes habita actualmente en Canadá, y de la que desciende la autora de este libro, por lo que sabe de lo que habla.
La novela arranca con el asesinato de una familia blanca en el entorno de la reserva y del apresamiento y la justicia sumarísima que los enfurecidos vecinos blancos llevan a cabo en unos pobres indios que tuvieron la mala suerte de pasar por la granja, cuando ya todos estaban muertos.
Apresados, colgados y todos contentos.
A partir de ahí la autora nos narra el tremendo entramado genealógico de los descendientes de los asesinos y de los asesinados, que va entretejiendo el destino.
La forma de escribir es fantástica, muy buena. Al principio no es fácil de seguir, con varios narradores, con muchos nombres y descendientes, pero poco a poco te va atrapando en su magia y acabas totalmente inmerso en la historia. La forma de narrar me ha cautivado, trufada de palabras en los idiomas originales de estas tribus, a veces parece que estás dentro de unos de esos cuentos que transmitían oralmente al calor de la hoguera, hipnotizado por las volutas de las llamas.
La historia de los personajes es tan intrincada que muchas veces he tenido que ir para atrás, para ver como se conectaban entre si. La autora no hace hincapié en la discriminación racial, no habla de los problemas de estas comunidades, no se regodea en la tragedia histórica, al menos no de forma abierta, aunque el fondo de la historia deja traslucir todos los problemas a los que se enfrentaron y se enfrentan estas comunidades. En algunos momentos no llegas a saber quien es indio de pura cepa, mestizo o blanco, todos se mezclan.
Al hilo de los mestizos, no sabía que los indios mestizos descendientes de los primeros colonizadores europeos, sobre todo franceses, habían establecido una etnia aparte (los metis o michif) y habían intentado independizarse del Canadá y formar un país independiente en los territorios del Noroeste, bajo el liderazgo de Louis Riel.
Lo peor el final. Ahí se le cae la estrella. Todo un libro avanzando en busca de los verdaderos culpables del asesinato y el resultado es más que previsible y con poca enjundia. Una lástima, porque el camino había sido maravilloso.
Gran descubrimiento y escritora a seguir.
En los años finales del siglo XIX los estados Unidos de Norte América empujan con fuerza hacia el oeste de su territorio para colonizar e incorporar a la Unión los territorios del Noroeste y del medio Oeste americano.
En los años finales del siglo XIX se produjo unos de los mayores declives poblacionales de la historia. La paloma migratoria americana pasó de contar con más de 3 mil millones de ejemplares a principios de siglo a estar prácticamente extinta a finales del mismo. El título del libro quizá hace referencia a la destrucción de la última gran colonia de este ave que se produjo en 1896 y que es uno de los episodios de la infancia de uno de los personajes del libro.
Lo mismo ocurrió con el búfalo que estaba al borde de la extinción a finales del siglo XIX, contando con menos de 1000 ejemplares. Este, al menos, ha podido recuperarse y salvarse.
Estos dos animales, entre muchos otros, formaban parte de la cultura, las tradiciones y el modo de vida de los pueblos originarios americanos que, como no podía ser menos, comenzaron a ser confinados en reservas, durante este siglo de expansión, proceso que culminó a finales del siglo XIX.
Las reservas no fueron una buena idea (o si lo fueron, si lo que pretendían era quitar del mapa, asimilando o estrangulando económicamente a estas gentes). Ni los protegieron, ni preservaron la cultura, las tradiciones o la libertad de estos pueblos. Se han convertido en reductos de pobreza, siempre a merced de las agencias estatales y gubernamentales, siempre en peligro de ser expropiados de estos últimos territorios cuando se descubren las riquezas naturales que atesoran, siempre asediados por el racismo y la codicia de los colonos que se iban asentando en estos nuevos territorios.
La novela está ambientada en Dakota del Norte, en el entorno de la reserva Chippewa, una gran tribu cuyo mayor número de habitantes habita actualmente en Canadá, y de la que desciende la autora de este libro, por lo que sabe de lo que habla.
La novela arranca con el asesinato de una familia blanca en el entorno de la reserva y del apresamiento y la justicia sumarísima que los enfurecidos vecinos blancos llevan a cabo en unos pobres indios que tuvieron la mala suerte de pasar por la granja, cuando ya todos estaban muertos.
Apresados, colgados y todos contentos.
A partir de ahí la autora nos narra el tremendo entramado genealógico de los descendientes de los asesinos y de los asesinados, que va entretejiendo el destino.
La forma de escribir es fantástica, muy buena. Al principio no es fácil de seguir, con varios narradores, con muchos nombres y descendientes, pero poco a poco te va atrapando en su magia y acabas totalmente inmerso en la historia. La forma de narrar me ha cautivado, trufada de palabras en los idiomas originales de estas tribus, a veces parece que estás dentro de unos de esos cuentos que transmitían oralmente al calor de la hoguera, hipnotizado por las volutas de las llamas.
La historia de los personajes es tan intrincada que muchas veces he tenido que ir para atrás, para ver como se conectaban entre si. La autora no hace hincapié en la discriminación racial, no habla de los problemas de estas comunidades, no se regodea en la tragedia histórica, al menos no de forma abierta, aunque el fondo de la historia deja traslucir todos los problemas a los que se enfrentaron y se enfrentan estas comunidades. En algunos momentos no llegas a saber quien es indio de pura cepa, mestizo o blanco, todos se mezclan.
Al hilo de los mestizos, no sabía que los indios mestizos descendientes de los primeros colonizadores europeos, sobre todo franceses, habían establecido una etnia aparte (los metis o michif) y habían intentado independizarse del Canadá y formar un país independiente en los territorios del Noroeste, bajo el liderazgo de Louis Riel.
Lo peor el final. Ahí se le cae la estrella. Todo un libro avanzando en busca de los verdaderos culpables del asesinato y el resultado es más que previsible y con poca enjundia. Una lástima, porque el camino había sido maravilloso.
Gran descubrimiento y escritora a seguir.
September 6, 2021
I loved this book about life on and just outside an Indian reservation in North Dakota. Erdrich is a masterful writer and creates vivid characters and keeps the reader guessing as to where the story will lead. I loved the Indian folklore and the realistic, hard-hitting description of the various issues faced by Native Americans. This book is really about a lynching that impacts families generations later. The metaphor of a plague of doves comes early on and really demonstrates a sort of late magical realism that I appreciated in this book that I think was more deserving of the Pulitzer than the winner, Olive Kitteridge.
June 24, 2011
Can I keep giving all the books I read this year four or five stars? Is my judgement becoming less and less credible (assuming it had any credibility in the first place)? May I just say that it's all Goodreads' fault, and the many Goodreaders (you know who you are) who've led me to these authors and books that so precisely fulfill my every literary desire? I'm getting ruthless at picking and choosing among my to-read pile, going only for those I *know* will satisfy me - the responsibility for which must be laid again firmly at the feet of Goodreads and Goodreaders.
So there, if you are getting fewer reviews and these meaningless and unvarying 4- and 5-star ratings from me, you have only yourself to blame. And I am too busy reading 4 and 5-star books to pay much attention or care.
REVIEW:
The Plague of Doves reads like a connected set of short stories, which (as I found out in the end notes) is what it started out as. While there was a loose narrative strand woven like a straw through these vignettes - a shocking event in the prologue, unravelled by the final chapter - that is not why you should read this, if you haven't yet.
No, it's for Erdrich's poetic, penetrating, raw insights. They left me breathless. They have both edge and lyricism in them. They are gritty, spare and harsh while also infused with an ethereal, magical reality, e.g.:
"I had expected to feel joy but instead felt a confusion of sorrow, or maybe fear, for it seemed that my life was a hungry story and I its source, and with this kiss I had now begun to deliver myself into the words." (Evelina, p. 20)
and, unexpected and prevalent, a razor-sharp black humour, e.g.:
"Mama said so, and when we fought she shut us up by saying, "Just imagine how you'd feel if something happened." Imagining the other dead helped us enjoy each other's company." (Evelina, p. 28)
The entire exchange between Joseph & Evelina's father and Mooshum, starting with:
"'Is your sister fond of flowers? What is her favorite?'
'Stinging nettles.'
...
'What were her charming habits when she was young?'
'She could fart the national anthem.'
...
'She's got her teeth, no? All of them?'
'Except the ones she left in her husbands.'" (p. 35)
Spirituality is treated with the complexity it deserves, e.g. the incredibly touching scenes between Evelina and Sister Mary Anita, and the way she describes how Shamengwa and Mooshum goad Father Cassidy.
And lines, snippets of dialogue, fleeting imagery that seem tossed off, but are deceptively important. Erdrich, like any poet, is deliberate in her descriptions:
"My uncle Warren, who would stare and stare at you like he was watching your blood move and your food digest." (Marn Wolde, p. 139)
"Looking into my father's eyes you would see the knowledge, tender and offhand, of the ways roots took hold in the earth." (p. 139)
How she deals with madness and sadness - the entire Marn Wolde section, but especially Marn's descriptions of how (and why) she dissociates ("The words are inside and outside of me, hanging in the air like small pottery triangles, broken and curved." p. 145; all of p. 146 - spectacular, haunting imagery).
The music. The violin, how it unites and divides a family; how it cures and kills. "That I must play was more important to me than my father's pain. ... It was a question of survival, after all. If I had not found the music, I would have died of the silence." (Shamengwa, p. 203)
Music and stories; magic and madness; brutality and guilt and, most of all, love:
"Her face, and my father's face, were naked with love. It wasn't something that we talked about - love - and I was terrified of its expression from the lips of my parents. But they allowed me this one clear look at it. Their love blazed from them. And then they left. I think now that everything that was concentrated in that one look--their care in raising me, their patient lessons in every subject they knew to teach, their wincing efforts to give me freedoms, their example of fortitude in work--allowed me to survive myself." (Evelina, p. 222)
The entire Evelina section, from her Anais Nin obsession to her bad poetry to her descent into her own hell and rise out of it, stands alone and shines, shines, shines with pain and longing; growth and survival -- even triumph.
Sometimes, often, Erdrich leads you down a paragraph or chapter and then concludes - wham - with a milestone plot point (someone died; came or left; endured or was destroyed) that has its impact rooted in the surprise of its inevitability.
She doesn't make you feel angry at not seeing it coming -- she just leaves you in awe that she got you there so subtly and cleverly. And then she gifts you with this insight that has about 12 million layers of meaning and resonance with the story, the other characters, and your own life. Because she's a poet, and poetry does that.
I love her.
I'm so glad she's written so many books, and I can savour them in turn without the anxiety of soon running out. Although, these are definitely books that bear and deserve re-reading.
So there, if you are getting fewer reviews and these meaningless and unvarying 4- and 5-star ratings from me, you have only yourself to blame. And I am too busy reading 4 and 5-star books to pay much attention or care.
REVIEW:
The Plague of Doves reads like a connected set of short stories, which (as I found out in the end notes) is what it started out as. While there was a loose narrative strand woven like a straw through these vignettes - a shocking event in the prologue, unravelled by the final chapter - that is not why you should read this, if you haven't yet.
No, it's for Erdrich's poetic, penetrating, raw insights. They left me breathless. They have both edge and lyricism in them. They are gritty, spare and harsh while also infused with an ethereal, magical reality, e.g.:
"I had expected to feel joy but instead felt a confusion of sorrow, or maybe fear, for it seemed that my life was a hungry story and I its source, and with this kiss I had now begun to deliver myself into the words." (Evelina, p. 20)
and, unexpected and prevalent, a razor-sharp black humour, e.g.:
"Mama said so, and when we fought she shut us up by saying, "Just imagine how you'd feel if something happened." Imagining the other dead helped us enjoy each other's company." (Evelina, p. 28)
The entire exchange between Joseph & Evelina's father and Mooshum, starting with:
"'Is your sister fond of flowers? What is her favorite?'
'Stinging nettles.'
...
'What were her charming habits when she was young?'
'She could fart the national anthem.'
...
'She's got her teeth, no? All of them?'
'Except the ones she left in her husbands.'" (p. 35)
Spirituality is treated with the complexity it deserves, e.g. the incredibly touching scenes between Evelina and Sister Mary Anita, and the way she describes how Shamengwa and Mooshum goad Father Cassidy.
And lines, snippets of dialogue, fleeting imagery that seem tossed off, but are deceptively important. Erdrich, like any poet, is deliberate in her descriptions:
"My uncle Warren, who would stare and stare at you like he was watching your blood move and your food digest." (Marn Wolde, p. 139)
"Looking into my father's eyes you would see the knowledge, tender and offhand, of the ways roots took hold in the earth." (p. 139)
How she deals with madness and sadness - the entire Marn Wolde section, but especially Marn's descriptions of how (and why) she dissociates ("The words are inside and outside of me, hanging in the air like small pottery triangles, broken and curved." p. 145; all of p. 146 - spectacular, haunting imagery).
The music. The violin, how it unites and divides a family; how it cures and kills. "That I must play was more important to me than my father's pain. ... It was a question of survival, after all. If I had not found the music, I would have died of the silence." (Shamengwa, p. 203)
Music and stories; magic and madness; brutality and guilt and, most of all, love:
"Her face, and my father's face, were naked with love. It wasn't something that we talked about - love - and I was terrified of its expression from the lips of my parents. But they allowed me this one clear look at it. Their love blazed from them. And then they left. I think now that everything that was concentrated in that one look--their care in raising me, their patient lessons in every subject they knew to teach, their wincing efforts to give me freedoms, their example of fortitude in work--allowed me to survive myself." (Evelina, p. 222)
The entire Evelina section, from her Anais Nin obsession to her bad poetry to her descent into her own hell and rise out of it, stands alone and shines, shines, shines with pain and longing; growth and survival -- even triumph.
Sometimes, often, Erdrich leads you down a paragraph or chapter and then concludes - wham - with a milestone plot point (someone died; came or left; endured or was destroyed) that has its impact rooted in the surprise of its inevitability.
She doesn't make you feel angry at not seeing it coming -- she just leaves you in awe that she got you there so subtly and cleverly. And then she gifts you with this insight that has about 12 million layers of meaning and resonance with the story, the other characters, and your own life. Because she's a poet, and poetry does that.
I love her.
I'm so glad she's written so many books, and I can savour them in turn without the anxiety of soon running out. Although, these are definitely books that bear and deserve re-reading.
May 29, 2008
Interweaves the oral history & 1st person narratives of the members of a N. Dakota town & reservation to look at the aftermath & effects of an isolated murder of a white family and subsequent lynching of several innocent Indians. I couldn't read this in one sitting, so I was finding myself having a hard time keeping all of the different threads and families straight. There seemed to be so many that by the end when a new one started, I couldn't help thinking, "yikes, when is she is going to pull all of this together?" She does, but I was still left scratching my head on a few things. Several of the storylines are incredible (Marn Wolde's & Evelina Harp's were my favorites), but some of the others weren't compelling enough for me to really love the book as a whole.
February 13, 2021
The Plague of Doves, a finalist for the Pulitzer prize in 2009 was an epic novel, the first of a trilogy, published by beloved author, Louis Erdrich, in 2009. This was the first book that I have read by this author and I was just entranced by her beautiful writing, her prose is just magical, as well as the plotting of this magnificent tale. This is a book that opens with a tragic murder of an entire family, all but a small baby found crying in a crib that was pushed and hidden behind a bed. We find out the identity of the baby in the final chapter as well as more details of that terrible day setting so many events in motion. With a sometimes dizzying cast of characters, eventually we begin to become immersed in several generations of families all related in some way to the Chippewa reservation in North Dakota. There are many episodes that each have a different narrator to bring us different perspectives to all of these lives and the fullness of each of these characters that evolve over time as we slowly learn the scope of their lives.
Louise Erdrich is an American author of novels, poetry and children's books; her father is German American and her mother half French-American and half Chippewa. According to her biography, she is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant Native American writers. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where both of her parents taught at Bureau of Indian Affairs Schools. Her fiction reflects her diverse background and aspects of her mixed heritage. Having grown up in New Mexico, and always being fascinated and interested in Native American cultures, I was just immersed and loving everything about this book and am looking forward to reading more of her works.
"Those doves were surely the passenger pigeons of legend and truth, whose numbers were such that nobody thought they could be ever wiped from the earth."
"The wind will blow. The devils rise. All who celebrate shall be ghosts. And there will be nothing but eternal dancing, dust on dust, everywhere you look."
Louise Erdrich is an American author of novels, poetry and children's books; her father is German American and her mother half French-American and half Chippewa. According to her biography, she is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant Native American writers. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where both of her parents taught at Bureau of Indian Affairs Schools. Her fiction reflects her diverse background and aspects of her mixed heritage. Having grown up in New Mexico, and always being fascinated and interested in Native American cultures, I was just immersed and loving everything about this book and am looking forward to reading more of her works.
"Those doves were surely the passenger pigeons of legend and truth, whose numbers were such that nobody thought they could be ever wiped from the earth."
"The wind will blow. The devils rise. All who celebrate shall be ghosts. And there will be nothing but eternal dancing, dust on dust, everywhere you look."
February 22, 2023
Wonderful book by Louise Erdrich which takes us to the town of Pluto, ND, and is the first of a trilogy about the town and people in that area. She paints a vivid picture of the town, the people, the mysterie and a murder. Well written and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. The 2nd book I have read by the author and enjoyed this one so very much!
December 14, 2008
louise erdrich wrote this with the wind of the spirit at her heels. what amazing writing. i'm going slowly, because a) the writing is too beautiful to hurry; b) the story is too intense to hurry; and, less fancifully, c) i need a solid plot-directed narrative to keep me going these days, and this book doesn't have one, so i am reading when the need for aforementioned is not too pressing.
this novel goes back and forth in time and space, focusing on a host of characters of mixed indian-white ethnicity in some state up north (i can't tell them apart in real life so i read their names fast and don't retain them in my memory -- minnesota? north dakota? one of those). some of these characters are straight out of flannery o'connor, others are funny; some chapters are pure adventure, others are magical realist, others are moving, others are simply deranged. but this is louise erdrich territory, and everything is delightful in its own way.
there are strong women. there are tender, damaged men. there is the tragedy of the land and the tragedy of race. there is the inescapable tragedy of human nature.
many of these chapters were published separately and the book has a disjointed feel, as if it were a collection of loosely connected (long) short stories. at the same time, there is a clear vision keeping it all together, as if erdrich had imagined one of those bruegel paintings then decided to tell us what's behind it, one character at a time, with all the time in the world to go back and tell the story from the beginning, properly.
for the record, i'm not even trying to keep the characters straight. i'm sure erdrich doesn't expect me to and seriously, who cares who's married to whom and who's the cousin of whom? they are all interrelated and it's a rum world out there anyway.
this novel goes back and forth in time and space, focusing on a host of characters of mixed indian-white ethnicity in some state up north (i can't tell them apart in real life so i read their names fast and don't retain them in my memory -- minnesota? north dakota? one of those). some of these characters are straight out of flannery o'connor, others are funny; some chapters are pure adventure, others are magical realist, others are moving, others are simply deranged. but this is louise erdrich territory, and everything is delightful in its own way.
there are strong women. there are tender, damaged men. there is the tragedy of the land and the tragedy of race. there is the inescapable tragedy of human nature.
many of these chapters were published separately and the book has a disjointed feel, as if it were a collection of loosely connected (long) short stories. at the same time, there is a clear vision keeping it all together, as if erdrich had imagined one of those bruegel paintings then decided to tell us what's behind it, one character at a time, with all the time in the world to go back and tell the story from the beginning, properly.
for the record, i'm not even trying to keep the characters straight. i'm sure erdrich doesn't expect me to and seriously, who cares who's married to whom and who's the cousin of whom? they are all interrelated and it's a rum world out there anyway.
February 2, 2022
Maybe 4.5 stars. I was sure I was going to like this audiobook as I've previously read/listened to another book by Louise Erdich and gave it 5 stars. The ending had me more shocked than I could imagine and I had to stop and think about it after I finished. I still haven't been able to stop thinking of it which is a rarity. Very intrigued to read more from this author
December 8, 2011
Louise Erdrich is a talented writer, and I've enjoyed several of her other books. So my expectations are high. The format of this is something we've seen from her too many times already-- it's time to experiment with something new.
The weaving of characters' stories is interesting, but not on par with the "Painted Drum" or what her former husband Michael Dorris did in "Yellow Raft on Blue Waters." The plot has so much potential and the writing is so compelling that it was disappointing that it didn't come together more dramatically.
In the author's comments Erdrich says that she created this novel by joining a bunch of stories she had previously written. It feel like it. I'd like to see someone of her caliber write a more carefully constructed book, eliminating the extraneous pieces that doesn't add to the story.
The weaving of characters' stories is interesting, but not on par with the "Painted Drum" or what her former husband Michael Dorris did in "Yellow Raft on Blue Waters." The plot has so much potential and the writing is so compelling that it was disappointing that it didn't come together more dramatically.
In the author's comments Erdrich says that she created this novel by joining a bunch of stories she had previously written. It feel like it. I'd like to see someone of her caliber write a more carefully constructed book, eliminating the extraneous pieces that doesn't add to the story.
January 11, 2019
This is the first novel I’ve read set in a twentieth century setting about French and American Indian descendants and the prejudices with which they’ve had to live. It has a fascinating and meandering plot with interesting characters peppered throughout. Ultimately it’s a who-done-it. For me, the ending was a tad of a letdown because you find out who but you don’t find out why.
September 24, 2018
William Faulkner meets Toni Morrison
This was a pleasant and downright surprising acquaintance with an author who until now was completely unknown to me. Louise Erdrich apparently already has written a whole oeuvre, but this book was her real, albeit late, breakthrough (2008). The relationship with Faulkner is immediately noticeable: just like the Nobel Laureate, all her books are set in a very limited geographical area in the United States; in her case in North Dakota, with its many Indian (I think I should say Native American) reservates and a very mixed population; Erdrich herself is of Indian-German-French origin. Another accordance with Faulkner: the technique of telling stories from different narrative positions, which regularly makes reading a difficult challenge, but has also an enormously enriching effect. Even more than Faulkner, Erdrich manages to mix the various storylines into a tangle that ingeniously merges at the end. A bloody mass murder in 1911 and the subsequent lynching of a group of (innocent) Native Americans is the recurring junction.
The style of Erdrich reminded me very much of Toni Morrison, especially when she went on the magical-realistic tour at some moments and also because of the very deeply human way in which the different actors tell their own story. But Erdrich has clearly developed her own style, which conceals a whole emotional world behind very striking, sometimes raw-looking details. And the Native American context of course adds to give her writing an own texture.
For the sake of clarity: this is not a simple book, you really have to keep your mind on it. Erdrich also uses various literary registers (she regularly jumps from an ego-narration to a third narrator's point of view), and she alternates rock-hard dramatic scenes with surreal fragments and also with hilarious comical passages. Not everything is worked out well enough, or is functional in the big storyline, because most chapters were apparently first published as separate stories left and right, and then connected in this book. But what remains is an impression of how complex a human life can be, and how the past inevitably leaves its deep traces into the present. From now on, Louise Erdrich is on my radar.
This was a pleasant and downright surprising acquaintance with an author who until now was completely unknown to me. Louise Erdrich apparently already has written a whole oeuvre, but this book was her real, albeit late, breakthrough (2008). The relationship with Faulkner is immediately noticeable: just like the Nobel Laureate, all her books are set in a very limited geographical area in the United States; in her case in North Dakota, with its many Indian (I think I should say Native American) reservates and a very mixed population; Erdrich herself is of Indian-German-French origin. Another accordance with Faulkner: the technique of telling stories from different narrative positions, which regularly makes reading a difficult challenge, but has also an enormously enriching effect. Even more than Faulkner, Erdrich manages to mix the various storylines into a tangle that ingeniously merges at the end. A bloody mass murder in 1911 and the subsequent lynching of a group of (innocent) Native Americans is the recurring junction.
The style of Erdrich reminded me very much of Toni Morrison, especially when she went on the magical-realistic tour at some moments and also because of the very deeply human way in which the different actors tell their own story. But Erdrich has clearly developed her own style, which conceals a whole emotional world behind very striking, sometimes raw-looking details. And the Native American context of course adds to give her writing an own texture.
For the sake of clarity: this is not a simple book, you really have to keep your mind on it. Erdrich also uses various literary registers (she regularly jumps from an ego-narration to a third narrator's point of view), and she alternates rock-hard dramatic scenes with surreal fragments and also with hilarious comical passages. Not everything is worked out well enough, or is functional in the big storyline, because most chapters were apparently first published as separate stories left and right, and then connected in this book. But what remains is an impression of how complex a human life can be, and how the past inevitably leaves its deep traces into the present. From now on, Louise Erdrich is on my radar.
January 30, 2019
This novel includes scenes of heartbreaking violence, but also includes an intermittently whimsical, even childlike narrative voice, and more than a touch of magic-realism lacing through family lore that is written with such a detached loveliness that it seemed to come from a different book, and wow, I really didn't like it. It's as if I ate an Altoid and a Sweet Tart at the same time. Maybe throw in a salt tablet too. There are a handful of books in my reading experience that I can tell objectively are well-written, even fine books, but even so these books repel me because of having too many flavors that don't work together. I could not find a way to integrate these disparate things into a meaningful whole.
March 27, 2021
This story is an interplay of generations in interconnecting circles, presented in a kaleidoscope fashion of conflicting cultures and individual perceptions — those of prejudices, zealots, scoundrels, weirdness, well-meaning, and naïveté — with truths waiting in the wings to come out. Along the way are insights into the deceptiveness of human subjectivity, both uplifting and woeful. Altogether, the reading experience is paradoxical escapism into the reality of the conflicted human condition.
Maybe I'm sensitive to the human condition context, but I found Louise Erdrich's writing herein oddly compelling.
Maybe I'm sensitive to the human condition context, but I found Louise Erdrich's writing herein oddly compelling.
November 14, 2023
Novels like this one—those that are nonlinear and unfocused—don’t work for me. Although the story deals with the long-term aftermath of a mysterious murder and subsequent lynching, these events take backseat in the narrative to prolonged, weirdly ordered discussions of multiple characters’ daily lives. Then, when interesting and seemingly important things do come up (e.g., a key character has their first experience empathizing with another person, after she and her classmates make fun of their teacher’s appearance), the story quickly jumps to something else entirely (e.g., the capture of a snapping turtle, a staged kidnapping). Consequently, the feeling I had when reading the novel was resignation, not being sure what to attend to and being unable to invest emotionally in any of the characters. I wish the author spent more time on what, at least to this reader, seems to be the core of the story:
“I asked what happened to the men who had lynched our people … ‘[They] got rich, fat, and never died out … They prospered and took over things. Half the country.’” (p. 82)
“I asked what happened to the men who had lynched our people … ‘[They] got rich, fat, and never died out … They prospered and took over things. Half the country.’” (p. 82)
February 11, 2021
The Plague of Doves
by Louise Erdrich
My first book by this author. A hard read for me. I generally need a promise of even the littlest positive change, a kiss of hope somewhere, and I need to pick that kiss up somewhere in the first third of the book. Author Erdrich didn’t really give that up, to my thinking. It was Jaws music through the entirety. My goal was to fall in love with this author. In the aftermath of pondering post-read, that goal remains. But The Doves didn’t get me there.
So why continue, and finish? Because I love a loop, and from the moment I heard of the baby cry from the murder scene, I knew I was in a loop. Every time a crime was committed, I was ready for the wrong person to take the blame. It hurt my heart to realize that was often how things really go.
I will read another Erdrich book, or re-read this one, as a second test of waters. All feedback welcomed – if you love this author / book, tell me why, specifically. And thank you in advance!
by Louise Erdrich
My first book by this author. A hard read for me. I generally need a promise of even the littlest positive change, a kiss of hope somewhere, and I need to pick that kiss up somewhere in the first third of the book. Author Erdrich didn’t really give that up, to my thinking. It was Jaws music through the entirety. My goal was to fall in love with this author. In the aftermath of pondering post-read, that goal remains. But The Doves didn’t get me there.
So why continue, and finish? Because I love a loop, and from the moment I heard of the baby cry from the murder scene, I knew I was in a loop. Every time a crime was committed, I was ready for the wrong person to take the blame. It hurt my heart to realize that was often how things really go.
I will read another Erdrich book, or re-read this one, as a second test of waters. All feedback welcomed – if you love this author / book, tell me why, specifically. And thank you in advance!
November 5, 2022
Unfortunately, my first DNF for Erdrich who happens to be one of my favorite Native-American authors. But, instead of focusing on the fascinating culture of the Ojibwe tribe (though the setting is here), she attends solely to the first-love experiences of two teens from opposite families, and I felt it was just so immature compared to her sophisticated, intricate, and marvelously wonderful books she has written later in her life. Perhaps I went in with very high expectations and not giving Erdrich enough credit since this was written more at the start of her career. Still, I contend she is one of my favorites.
July 3, 2024
I can't believe it's been more than 5 years since I read Louise Erdrich. She has always been among my favorites. The last few weeks I've felt myself being pulled into a reading slump and this brought me out. Hurray!
The GR description makes this sound as if it is a mystery. I suppose there is the underlying story of a murder long past, but it's not as if any of the characters is actively trying to solve it. Besides, there is much more to this novel. Erdrich gives us characters that are very believable and who have their own present day lives. The young have their future and the old have their memories.
Erdrich can tell a story in one sentence. He had visited himself for a short time upon a woman named Louisa Bird ― small, pretty, some four years older and unfortunately Presbyterian, but she certainly hadn't kissed him and was stolen away during a sleigh ride by a young St. Paul minister with a set of fabulous whiskers.
She can give you a sense of place in one sentence. The wind came off the dense-grassed slough, smelling like wet hair, and the hot ditch grass reached for it, butter yellow, its life concentrated in its fiber mat, each stalk so dry it gave off a puff of smoke when snapped.
Sometimes she takes a bit longer to do both.
The GR description makes this sound as if it is a mystery. I suppose there is the underlying story of a murder long past, but it's not as if any of the characters is actively trying to solve it. Besides, there is much more to this novel. Erdrich gives us characters that are very believable and who have their own present day lives. The young have their future and the old have their memories.
Erdrich can tell a story in one sentence. He had visited himself for a short time upon a woman named Louisa Bird ― small, pretty, some four years older and unfortunately Presbyterian, but she certainly hadn't kissed him and was stolen away during a sleigh ride by a young St. Paul minister with a set of fabulous whiskers.
She can give you a sense of place in one sentence. The wind came off the dense-grassed slough, smelling like wet hair, and the hot ditch grass reached for it, butter yellow, its life concentrated in its fiber mat, each stalk so dry it gave off a puff of smoke when snapped.
Sometimes she takes a bit longer to do both.
He was fine-looking, yes, but there were other things about him. Shamengwa was a man of refinement who practiced clean habits. He prepared himself carefully to meet life every day. Ojibwe language in several dialects is spoken on our reservation, along with Cree, and Michif ― a mixture of all three. Owehzhee is one of the words used for the way men get themselves up ― neaten, scrub, pluck stray hairs, brush each tooth, make precise parts in our hair, and, these days, press a sharp crease down the front of our blue jeans ― in order to show that although the government has tried in every way possible to destroy our manhood, we are undefeatable. Owehzehee. We still look good and know it. The old man was never seen in disarray, but yet there was more to it.There is a reason this won the Anisfield-Book Award, and nearly won both the Pulitzer and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. I'm sorry it took so long for me to get to it. Although her books are certainly not a series, I've been cautioned to read Erdrich in order and so this had to wait. I hope it won't be so long for the next one. I think this won't be my favorite Erdrich, but it has reminded me how very special she is. A full 5-stars and not one that just barely makes it into that group.
October 17, 2025
Erdrich has a way of writing stories that feel at once both intimate and epic. In this patch-work quilt of a novel we get multiple perspectives and different time-frames coming together to create something powerful and rich.
“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.”
What is this book?
Is it a historical mystery, as I have seen it classified? Well, yes, but that also doesn't completely capture it. There absolutely is a mystery at the core of this novel, but this is a book of people's stories, their community and individual lives, and yes how they are impacted by a particular tragedy but also it feels like it is much much more. The mystery of it does persist and resurfaces and eventually we do get some answers, but for me it is not the point here.
Is this a book about the murder of a family? As for plot, early on a mass murder is recounted, but I would argue that there are three themes that feel more important than the murders themselves: (1) perspective and how it is often impossible to ever know the "full truth"; (2) injustice, which has a lot more to do with how we react in situations and often on limited information and from a limited perspective; (3) love in all it's forms - this book has puppy love, young love, first love, brotherly love, impassioned love, obsessive love, parental love, friend love, love of a community, familial love, you get the idea. The murders are not beside the point, but they aren't the point, more of the catalyst that kicks off everything else.
It this book literary? Absolutely (though this is always an area of contention - what does literary even mean?). I always find Erdrich's writing to be infinitely readable, but the meandering layered nature to be complex in all the best ways. I do tend to take a little longer in reading her books than perhaps the average book, but I am not sure that it would be accurate to call her writing dense. I do want to emphasize that her writing is never pretentious or stuffy as I think some readers may associate literary with those adjectives. I think it's just that her writing has a way of striking an emotional chord and also leave you thinking.
Is this book dark/heavy/serious? There are dark and very serious topics and situations covered in this book, but another mark in Erdrich's favor is how she also incorporates humor. This book had some genuinely funny scenes, sometimes it's the type of head shaking chuckle that is directed at an older family member or the banter that is only funny because of the context and the individual's relationship, but it is completely relatable humor.
In case it isn't clear from all the above, I loved this book and Erdrich's writing in general, but how does it stack up against other books I have read by her? I previously read The Sentence and The Round House, in that order, and thus far I have liked each more than the last. This makes me think a little bit of Toni Morrison, because with each book it takes a little while to get into but they both always manage to surprise me in some way, and by the end I am all chef's kisses and standing ovations, apologizing for any momentary doubts.
“When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.”
What is this book?
Is it a historical mystery, as I have seen it classified? Well, yes, but that also doesn't completely capture it. There absolutely is a mystery at the core of this novel, but this is a book of people's stories, their community and individual lives, and yes how they are impacted by a particular tragedy but also it feels like it is much much more. The mystery of it does persist and resurfaces and eventually we do get some answers, but for me it is not the point here.
Is this a book about the murder of a family? As for plot, early on a mass murder is recounted, but I would argue that there are three themes that feel more important than the murders themselves: (1) perspective and how it is often impossible to ever know the "full truth"; (2) injustice, which has a lot more to do with how we react in situations and often on limited information and from a limited perspective; (3) love in all it's forms - this book has puppy love, young love, first love, brotherly love, impassioned love, obsessive love, parental love, friend love, love of a community, familial love, you get the idea. The murders are not beside the point, but they aren't the point, more of the catalyst that kicks off everything else.
It this book literary? Absolutely (though this is always an area of contention - what does literary even mean?). I always find Erdrich's writing to be infinitely readable, but the meandering layered nature to be complex in all the best ways. I do tend to take a little longer in reading her books than perhaps the average book, but I am not sure that it would be accurate to call her writing dense. I do want to emphasize that her writing is never pretentious or stuffy as I think some readers may associate literary with those adjectives. I think it's just that her writing has a way of striking an emotional chord and also leave you thinking.
Is this book dark/heavy/serious? There are dark and very serious topics and situations covered in this book, but another mark in Erdrich's favor is how she also incorporates humor. This book had some genuinely funny scenes, sometimes it's the type of head shaking chuckle that is directed at an older family member or the banter that is only funny because of the context and the individual's relationship, but it is completely relatable humor.
In case it isn't clear from all the above, I loved this book and Erdrich's writing in general, but how does it stack up against other books I have read by her? I previously read The Sentence and The Round House, in that order, and thus far I have liked each more than the last. This makes me think a little bit of Toni Morrison, because with each book it takes a little while to get into but they both always manage to surprise me in some way, and by the end I am all chef's kisses and standing ovations, apologizing for any momentary doubts.
December 25, 2012
**************************
We never really can escape our own histories. And our histories are darker than we realize.
These two truths frequently inform the complex plots and genealogies of Louise Erdrich’s fiction.
In many of her earlier writings she has taken whole series of books to puzzle these interlocking plots and genealogies. She reveals hidden identities. And follows bloodlines of power through families. And she shocks and haunts us with secreted knowledge that becomes, at least, partially discovered. And, also, she creates unforgettable characters that must live with and stumble upon these bloodlines of power, hidden identities, and secreted knowledge. But resolutions to these generations of damage or to these stored potentials are not common.
However in “The Plague of Doves”, she assembles these decades of genealogies and identities, secrets and causal chain reactions, and mysteries into one single book. And this is no small task.
As any casual reading of published synopses will tell you, the murder of a farm family and the lynching of a small group of Native Americans and Metis sets in motion a prolonged series of misunderstood, but inevitable, repercussions. These repercussions continue, hidden by denial, and unobserved by the sleepwalking population living through almost a century’s worth of history in a declining North Dakota farm town.
This complex tale is told by a handful of changing narrators, each misunderstanding their own part of this complex and frequently emotionally difficult history of a reservation “border town”. The reader is challenged with piecing together the interlocking genealogies as well as the damaged family histories, so that an understanding of the tragic impacts of those murders and lynching may be discovered.
But this journey is seasoned with characters to love, and stories to remember. All told with the skilled paced writing of a master. My interest in the progression of the story was never lost. And my emotional involvement in the characters’ lives was held throughout. People I learned to love found themselves in histories impossible to escape.
And the impact of these experiences remains in my soul and will endure.
We never really can escape our own histories. And our histories are darker than we realize.
These two truths frequently inform the complex plots and genealogies of Louise Erdrich’s fiction.
In many of her earlier writings she has taken whole series of books to puzzle these interlocking plots and genealogies. She reveals hidden identities. And follows bloodlines of power through families. And she shocks and haunts us with secreted knowledge that becomes, at least, partially discovered. And, also, she creates unforgettable characters that must live with and stumble upon these bloodlines of power, hidden identities, and secreted knowledge. But resolutions to these generations of damage or to these stored potentials are not common.
However in “The Plague of Doves”, she assembles these decades of genealogies and identities, secrets and causal chain reactions, and mysteries into one single book. And this is no small task.
As any casual reading of published synopses will tell you, the murder of a farm family and the lynching of a small group of Native Americans and Metis sets in motion a prolonged series of misunderstood, but inevitable, repercussions. These repercussions continue, hidden by denial, and unobserved by the sleepwalking population living through almost a century’s worth of history in a declining North Dakota farm town.
This complex tale is told by a handful of changing narrators, each misunderstanding their own part of this complex and frequently emotionally difficult history of a reservation “border town”. The reader is challenged with piecing together the interlocking genealogies as well as the damaged family histories, so that an understanding of the tragic impacts of those murders and lynching may be discovered.
But this journey is seasoned with characters to love, and stories to remember. All told with the skilled paced writing of a master. My interest in the progression of the story was never lost. And my emotional involvement in the characters’ lives was held throughout. People I learned to love found themselves in histories impossible to escape.
And the impact of these experiences remains in my soul and will endure.
August 27, 2013
If I'm to be honest about the work of Louise Erdrich, I must admit that I don't much care for her characters, her locales, her plots, or the meandering manner in which she chooses to negotiate her narrative. However, should you attempt to wrest one of these novels from my grasp be forewarned, you will have a bit of a fight on your hands.
Because what Ms. Erdrich excels at, what she brings so adeptly to the page, where her skills align like so many tumblers to the sophisticated lock of storytelling mastery, is the conveyance of the internal voice. The internal voice is where we make our connection to art, and Ms. Erdrich's ability to open that channel to perception, cognition, identification and investment is, to my eye, unparalleled. Minds meld in this endeavor - hers to yours, yours to hers, ours to whatever psychic dynamic she chooses to introduce. Solid, authentic, complex; her inner worlds are worlds we share, worlds we've earned, worlds we've somehow been saddled with over the course of a lifetime's trial and error.
So I'm not going to tell you what "The Plague of Doves" is about because it really doesn't matter. If you're looking for communion, your author's right here.
November 26, 2013
If you like nonlinear, disjointed, many layered, ambiguous sophisticated "modern" literature you will love this. I keep trying to love Erdrich's highly praised novels but with the conclusion of this book I am ceasing my efforts in this regard. I didn't care about the characters, felt the ending was unfinished, the entire work unpolished and found her prose was well, blahhhhh. It was a little edgy, but not entertaining, not evocative, lovely, nor inspiring, nonetheless it was a 2009 Pulitzer Nominee so perhaps the problem is with me, the unworthy reader, not the work. But to that argument My response is well stated in The Atlantic article An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness of American literary prose.
February 15, 2016
It has been a few months since I finished "the Plague of Doves", and I have been thinking about the book a lot ever since. I really liked everything about the novel: its construction as an assortment of portraits, the dramatic tension that culminates in the revealing of a shattering truth, and of course Louise Erdrich's impeccable voice. This is truly one of the many voices of America, telling its story of passion, excess, violence and betrayal. Ghosts loom large in this book, not only the ghosts of actual people, shot or hung, but also the ghosts of religion, new or ancient, the ghosts of mental illness, be they clad in alcohol, street drugs or institutions. Crystal clear, terrifying and seductive...
August 1, 2008
Louise Erdrich, master storyteller and language artist, does it again, but even better this time. Louise write about the intersection of the caucasian and Obijibwe (spelling?) of the Dakotas. This book, more than anything, explores the ripples in the pond effect one horrendous action can have on future generations in a community. Other reviewers have said that the book is too confusing, too many characters, too many storylines. My response is, that if you wish to know what it is like to live in a community such as this, small, isolated, and self-aware, but not, then read this book. Since everyone's truth varies, the stories, memories, perceptions and understandings of an event varies, as does the actions of people in response to the events. Erdrich captures this perfectly in her use of multiple characters, story threads and sometimes ambiguity.
December 15, 2013
"History works itself out in the living," says a character in Louise Erdrich's new novel, and, indeed, the history in The Plague of Doves is something of a workout. She's challenged us before with complex, interconnected stories about the Ojibwe people of North Dakota, but here she goes for broke, whirling out a vast, fractured narrative, teeming with characters -- ancestors, cousins, friends and enemies, all separated and rejoined again and again in uncanny ways over the years. Worried about losing track, I started drawing a genealogical chart after a few chapters, but it was futile: a tangle of names and squiggling lines. That bafflement is clearly an intentional effect of this wondrous novel; the sprawling cast whose history Erdrich works through becomes a living demonstration of the unfathomable repercussions of cruelty.
In the creepy, one-paragraph chapter that opens The Plague of Doves, a man murders five members of a white family in Pluto, N.D., near the Ojibwe reservation in 1911. The chronology of the stories that follow is radically jumbled, but the massacre in Pluto precipitates another one: When four hapless Indians come upon the dead family, they discover that a baby has been left alive in the house. Determined to save the child from abandonment but worried they'll be held responsible for the murders, they leave an anonymous note for the sheriff. Their plan backfires, though, and a gang of white men lynches the Indians in a heartbreaking scene that is among the most moving and mysterious in the novel.
These dual crimes hang over the town and the nearby reservation for decades, spreading through the population's DNA as relatives of the victims and the perpetrators work together, intermarry and teach each other's children. "Sorrow was a thing that each of them covered up according to their character," Erdrich writes. "Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood." As the town's economy slowly dies, the whites forget the gruesome incident, or pretend to; the Indians bear it like a festering, private wound; and the area's many biracial members worry over its unanswered questions. "Now that some of us have mixed in the spring of our existence both guilt and victim," one of them says, "there is no unraveling the rope."
At the center of all this complication is Evelina Harp, a passionate, endearing young woman, who, like Erdrich, is the daughter of an Indian mother and a white teacher on the reservation. We follow Eve from grade school to college, through crushes on her dangerous cousin, her gargoyle-like sixth-grade teacher and the writings of Anaïs Nin. Eve also has an unquenchable appetite for stories, particularly the captivating tales told by her grandfather, Mooshum. Fans of Erdrich's rich chronicle of the Ojibwe will notice with pleasure his resemblance to the old Indian Nanapush from "Tracks" (1988) and Four Souls (2004), though Mooshum is, ultimately, a more tragic character.
His intimate rendition of the murders and subsequent lynching permanently jars Eve's sense of her community. "I could not look at anyone in quite the same way anymore. I became obsessed with lineage," she says. "I traced the blood history of the murders through my classmates and friends until I could draw out elaborate spider webs of lines and intersecting circles." But that bewildering thicket of consequence and blame eventually wreaks havoc on Eve's mind, forcing her to reconsider just what kind of woman she is. "When we are young," she observes wisely, "the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape."
Following the form Erdrich developed in her first novel, Love Medicine (1984), other narrators take over parts of this book, either shading events Eve understands only vaguely or adding whole new branches to the community's history. Some of these discontinuous episodes -- from the arrival of white settlers to the social problems of the 1970s -- relate tangentially to each other, but the connections among many parts of the novel are invisible until much later. We hear the story of 19th-century speculators launching out during winter to lay claim on this land, only to end up eating their shoes one frozen night. The tale of a dove infestation in 1896 -- which gives the novel its title -- reads like a Native American twist on Alfred Hitchcock, the lovely birds accumulating until they become grotesque. And decades later, a bank robbery leads to the bizarre rise of an apocalyptic cult.
What marks these stories -- some of which appeared in the New Yorker and the Atlantic -- is what has always set Erdrich apart and made her work seem miraculous: the jostling of pathos and comedy, tragedy and slapstick in a peculiar dance. As horrific as the crimes at the heart of this novel are, other sections remind us that Erdrich is a great comic writer. When Mooshum isn't leading Eve through the history of her family, he's daring the local Catholic priest to save him or pursuing alcohol and romance with dogged, hilarious determination. Some of the funniest moments take place during a funeral, and even the murders and lynchings that bleed so much heartache are heightened by incongruous notes of humor.
Despite its remoteness, the tiny town of Pluto begins to seem more and more like a microcosm of America and its troubled past. Judge Antone Coutts, a descendant of one of the original white settlers, notes that "the entire reservation is rife with conflicting passions. We can't seem to keep our hands off one another, it is true, and every attempt to foil our lusts through laws and religious dictums seems bound instead to excite transgression." In the end, the hatred and suspicion between Indians and whites are subsumed by their tangled history, the passage of time that bestows its own strange peace. Hovering over the entire novel is the image of those voracious doves, covering the ground, blanketing everything, consuming everything in a fluttering wave of white feathers.
"I am sentenced to keep watch over this small patch of earth," says one character, who could just as well be speaking for Erdrich herself, "to judge its miseries and tell its stories. That's who I am."
Sit down and listen carefully.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...
In the creepy, one-paragraph chapter that opens The Plague of Doves, a man murders five members of a white family in Pluto, N.D., near the Ojibwe reservation in 1911. The chronology of the stories that follow is radically jumbled, but the massacre in Pluto precipitates another one: When four hapless Indians come upon the dead family, they discover that a baby has been left alive in the house. Determined to save the child from abandonment but worried they'll be held responsible for the murders, they leave an anonymous note for the sheriff. Their plan backfires, though, and a gang of white men lynches the Indians in a heartbreaking scene that is among the most moving and mysterious in the novel.
These dual crimes hang over the town and the nearby reservation for decades, spreading through the population's DNA as relatives of the victims and the perpetrators work together, intermarry and teach each other's children. "Sorrow was a thing that each of them covered up according to their character," Erdrich writes. "Nothing that happens, nothing, is not connected here by blood." As the town's economy slowly dies, the whites forget the gruesome incident, or pretend to; the Indians bear it like a festering, private wound; and the area's many biracial members worry over its unanswered questions. "Now that some of us have mixed in the spring of our existence both guilt and victim," one of them says, "there is no unraveling the rope."
At the center of all this complication is Evelina Harp, a passionate, endearing young woman, who, like Erdrich, is the daughter of an Indian mother and a white teacher on the reservation. We follow Eve from grade school to college, through crushes on her dangerous cousin, her gargoyle-like sixth-grade teacher and the writings of Anaïs Nin. Eve also has an unquenchable appetite for stories, particularly the captivating tales told by her grandfather, Mooshum. Fans of Erdrich's rich chronicle of the Ojibwe will notice with pleasure his resemblance to the old Indian Nanapush from "Tracks" (1988) and Four Souls (2004), though Mooshum is, ultimately, a more tragic character.
His intimate rendition of the murders and subsequent lynching permanently jars Eve's sense of her community. "I could not look at anyone in quite the same way anymore. I became obsessed with lineage," she says. "I traced the blood history of the murders through my classmates and friends until I could draw out elaborate spider webs of lines and intersecting circles." But that bewildering thicket of consequence and blame eventually wreaks havoc on Eve's mind, forcing her to reconsider just what kind of woman she is. "When we are young," she observes wisely, "the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape."
Following the form Erdrich developed in her first novel, Love Medicine (1984), other narrators take over parts of this book, either shading events Eve understands only vaguely or adding whole new branches to the community's history. Some of these discontinuous episodes -- from the arrival of white settlers to the social problems of the 1970s -- relate tangentially to each other, but the connections among many parts of the novel are invisible until much later. We hear the story of 19th-century speculators launching out during winter to lay claim on this land, only to end up eating their shoes one frozen night. The tale of a dove infestation in 1896 -- which gives the novel its title -- reads like a Native American twist on Alfred Hitchcock, the lovely birds accumulating until they become grotesque. And decades later, a bank robbery leads to the bizarre rise of an apocalyptic cult.
What marks these stories -- some of which appeared in the New Yorker and the Atlantic -- is what has always set Erdrich apart and made her work seem miraculous: the jostling of pathos and comedy, tragedy and slapstick in a peculiar dance. As horrific as the crimes at the heart of this novel are, other sections remind us that Erdrich is a great comic writer. When Mooshum isn't leading Eve through the history of her family, he's daring the local Catholic priest to save him or pursuing alcohol and romance with dogged, hilarious determination. Some of the funniest moments take place during a funeral, and even the murders and lynchings that bleed so much heartache are heightened by incongruous notes of humor.
Despite its remoteness, the tiny town of Pluto begins to seem more and more like a microcosm of America and its troubled past. Judge Antone Coutts, a descendant of one of the original white settlers, notes that "the entire reservation is rife with conflicting passions. We can't seem to keep our hands off one another, it is true, and every attempt to foil our lusts through laws and religious dictums seems bound instead to excite transgression." In the end, the hatred and suspicion between Indians and whites are subsumed by their tangled history, the passage of time that bestows its own strange peace. Hovering over the entire novel is the image of those voracious doves, covering the ground, blanketing everything, consuming everything in a fluttering wave of white feathers.
"I am sentenced to keep watch over this small patch of earth," says one character, who could just as well be speaking for Erdrich herself, "to judge its miseries and tell its stories. That's who I am."
Sit down and listen carefully.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...
October 29, 2024
Die Verwobenheit des Casts von Charakteren, die sich bis zum Ende immer weiter offenbart, ist unglaublich intelligent und das macht das Buch bis zum Schluss interessant. Leider finde ich, dass es zwischendurch trotzdem ganz schöne Längen hat und ab und zu hatte ich trotz größter Konzentration Schwierigkeiten, den Durchblick zu behalten.
February 4, 2017
RE: _The Plague of Doves_ (2008) by Louise Erdrich
[This book was a Pulitzer Prize finalist (Fiction, 2009)]
[I read this book in Jan/Feb 2009. I added shelves on 4/1/11.]
For my comments about this book, please see the following discussion thread:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
Below is the my first post at the link above:
========================================
Last night, our town library book group discussed _The Plague of Doves A Novel_ by Louise Erdrich.
Both the book and the author are highly acclaimed. I found that I had to plow through this book. It is non-linear and seems disjointed. Also, there are too many characters to keep track of. The lyricism got on my nerves. It has several narrators and, at times, I didn't know which narrator was speaking. The book was a difficult read for me.
All in all, I did not enjoy this book and I only read it because the group was reading it and because I wanted to find out what the hoop-la is all about.
At our group discussion, I learned that the modern novel often tends to be non-linear and does not provide the exposition which helps to orient the reader. Instead, the reader is supposed to figure out the exposition (i.e., the background and the setting, etc.) by reading the events in the story.
If I remember correctly, the book, The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje is written in this modern style. I found that book difficult to read as well.
In the next message in this topic [Messsage #2 at https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...], I am going to post a long list of comments about the book which I found here at Goodreads. That is my way of complaining about this highly acclaimed book and writer. Any other opinions are welcome.
==============================================
See the continued conversation at the discussion thread:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
PS-In addition to all my other comments, I want to add that I found the ending of the story just as ambiguous as the rest of the story. I have asked for explanations from many people who liked the book, but none of them were able to give me a straight answer.
PPS-Without giving spoilers, I'd like to add that the plot seems to be like a complicated "who-done-it" story... and in the end, I still had questions about "who-done-it" because the answer given was vague and ambiguous. Furthermore, from what I could make of the answer, it was a huge let-down after all that reading.
PPPS-For a good review of this book ( The Plague of Doves A Novel ), see:
http://www.barcelonareview.com/rev/63...
This review clarifies things quite a bit.
It's well written and includes understandable details.
[This book was a Pulitzer Prize finalist (Fiction, 2009)]
[I read this book in Jan/Feb 2009. I added shelves on 4/1/11.]
For my comments about this book, please see the following discussion thread:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
Below is the my first post at the link above:
========================================
Last night, our town library book group discussed _The Plague of Doves A Novel_ by Louise Erdrich.
Both the book and the author are highly acclaimed. I found that I had to plow through this book. It is non-linear and seems disjointed. Also, there are too many characters to keep track of. The lyricism got on my nerves. It has several narrators and, at times, I didn't know which narrator was speaking. The book was a difficult read for me.
All in all, I did not enjoy this book and I only read it because the group was reading it and because I wanted to find out what the hoop-la is all about.
At our group discussion, I learned that the modern novel often tends to be non-linear and does not provide the exposition which helps to orient the reader. Instead, the reader is supposed to figure out the exposition (i.e., the background and the setting, etc.) by reading the events in the story.
If I remember correctly, the book, The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje is written in this modern style. I found that book difficult to read as well.
In the next message in this topic [Messsage #2 at https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...], I am going to post a long list of comments about the book which I found here at Goodreads. That is my way of complaining about this highly acclaimed book and writer. Any other opinions are welcome.
==============================================
See the continued conversation at the discussion thread:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...
PS-In addition to all my other comments, I want to add that I found the ending of the story just as ambiguous as the rest of the story. I have asked for explanations from many people who liked the book, but none of them were able to give me a straight answer.
PPS-Without giving spoilers, I'd like to add that the plot seems to be like a complicated "who-done-it" story... and in the end, I still had questions about "who-done-it" because the answer given was vague and ambiguous. Furthermore, from what I could make of the answer, it was a huge let-down after all that reading.
PPPS-For a good review of this book ( The Plague of Doves A Novel ), see:
http://www.barcelonareview.com/rev/63...
This review clarifies things quite a bit.
It's well written and includes understandable details.
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