The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

 

 

Hello May! Boy, are we ever ready for your sunshine and warmer temperatures! For May, we discussed The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich, with The Bookshop on the Corner, by Jenny Colgan up next for June. As a head up, we'd like to mention that we have very limited quantities of June's book, The Bookshop on the Corner, within the Viking System. There are, however, audio book versions available, as well as an electronic version on Hoopla for anyone interested in those alternatives. Otherwise, we encourage you to please get your borrowed copies back to us as quickly as possible so that we can pass them along to the next person in line. Thanks for you help with this!

As promised, we voted in the books for next year's reading list at yesterday's meeting~ yeah! We'd like to thank each of you that participated either in voting either online or in person. This book club wouldn't be the same without you! We are currently busy bee's putting them into a schedule, but are hoping to have that ready for you within the next couple of days. We'll be sure to post it here when it's ready, and we'll also have copies available at the front desk to take home. Happy reading!

 

Onward!

 

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.

This book had us divided. On the one side, there were those who really liked it~ gave it 4 stars. They appreciated the writing, found the ghost/haunting bits entertaining, and mentioned that they thought this book might be semi autobiographical in that Erdrich is a book store owner in Minneapolis (a select few of our members said they've even visited her shop!) and that she, and her store, were most likely right in the center of the George Floyd storm and subsequent rioting that ravaged that area. Clearly, she, like everyone else, has been effected by the Covid 19 pandemic, so it wasn't hard for some to understand why these events made it into her book. 

On the other hand, there were those who didn't care for the book~ some couldn't bring themselves to finish it. These members cited an outlandish, unbelievable opening chapter and difficulty keeping up with plot transitions. They found it bizarre and disjointed. This book felt crowded with all the different elements added in~ prison, George Floyd, rioting, Covid, ghosts, Native American rights and rituals, family issues, etc. Were all these components necessary to the story? Did they leave us with anything meaningful? 

 

Which side did you find yourself on?

 

Are you a fan of The Sentence? Fans of the book also enjoyed, Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, Our Missing Hearts, by Celeste Ng, and Cloud Cuckoo Land, by Anthony Doerr. All of these titles are available within the Viking system~ reserve your copy today!   

 

At the conclusion of every book club discussion we ask three questions and track the average answers:

Would we recommend this to a friend to read? 
"NO"  

 
Would we recommend this to another book club for discussion?
"YES"

Rate the book 1-5 stars, with 1 being the lowest rating: 
3 stars