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The Round House
The Round House
The Round House won the National Book Award for fiction.One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life—Louise Erdrich returns to the territory...
The Round House won the National Book Award for fiction.One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life—Louise Erdrich returns to the territory...
Reviews-
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Starred review from July 16, 2012
Erdrich, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, sets her newest (after Shadow Tag) in 1988 in an Ojibwe community in North Dakota; the story pulses with urgency as she probes the moral and legal ramifications of a terrible act of violence. When tribal enrollment expert Geraldine Coutts is viciously attacked, her ordeal is made even more devastating by the legal ambiguities surrounding the location and perpetrator of the assault—did the attack occur on tribal, federal, or state land? Is the aggressor white or Indian? As Geraldine becomes enveloped by depression, her husband, Bazil (the tribal judge), and their 13-year-old son, Joe, try desperately to identify her assailant and bring him to justice. The teen quickly grows frustrated with the slow pace of the law, so Joe and three friends take matters into their own hands. But revenge exacts a tragic price, and Joe is jarringly ushered into an adult realm of anguished guilt and ineffable sadness. Through Joe’s narration, which is by turns raunchy and emotionally immediate, Erdrich perceptively chronicles the attack’s disastrous effect on the family’s domestic life, their community, and Joe’s own premature introduction to a violent world. Agent: Andrew Wiley. -
May 15, 2012
Erdrich continues the trilogy begun with The Plague of Doves with the story of an Ojibwe woman named Geraldine Coutts who is ruthlessly attacked one summer morning in 1988. Because she refuses to speak about the event, her husband, Bazil, and their 13-year-old son, Joe, try to answer the most basic questions, e.g., was the attacker Indian or white? Frustrated, Joe rounds up three friends and hunts for the truth himself. Erdrich is such a natural that one almost forgets how good she is; with a 100,000-copy first printing and a seven-city tour.
Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- Elizabeth Taylor, Chicago Tribune "Wise and suspenseful...Erdrich's voice as well as her powers of insight and imagination fully infuse this novel...She writes so perceptively and brilliantly about the adolescent passion for justice that one is transported northward to her home territory."
- NPR/All Thing's Considered "Erdrich has given us a multitude of narrative voices and stories. Never before has she given us a novel with a single narrative voice so smart, rich and full of surprises as she has in The Round House...and, I would argue, her best so far."
- Ron Charles, Washington Post "Emotionally compelling...Joe is an incredibly endearing narrator, full of urgency and radiant candor...the story he tells transforms a sad, isolated crime into a revelation about how maturity alters our relationship with our parents, delivering us into new kinds of love and pain."
- Michiko Kakutani, New York Times "The novel showcases her [Erdrich's] extraordinary ability to delineate the ties of love, resentment, need, duty and sympathy that bind families together...[a] powerful novel."
- Entertainment Weekly "A gripping mystery with a moral twist: Revenge might be the harshest punishment, but only for the victims. A-"
- Parade, Fall's Best Books "Moving, complex, and surprisingly uplifting...likely to be dubbed the Native American TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD"
- Philadelphia Inquirer "Erdrich never shields the reader or Joe from the truth...She writes simply, without flourish."
- Minneapolis Star Tribune "An artfully balanced mystery, thriller and coming-of-age story...this novel will have you reading at warp speed to see what happens next."
- Cleveland Plain Dealer "Erdrich's bittersweet contemplation of love and friendship, morality and generativity...result in a tender, tough coming-of-age tale."
- New York Times Book Review "A powerful human story...By boring deeply into one person's darkest episode, Erdrich hits the bedrock truth about a whole community."
- San Francisco Chronicle "One of the most pleasurable aspects of Erdrich's writing...is that while her narratives are loose and sprawling, the language is always tight and poetically compressed...In the end there's nothing, not the arresting plot or the shocking ending of THE ROUND HOUSE, that resonates as much as the characters."
- Miami Herald "Joe may be one of Erdrich's best-drawn characters; he's conflicted, feisty one moment, scared and disappointed the next. THE ROUND HOUSE will inevitably draw comparisons to Harper Lee's TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD..."
- Karen Holt, O, the Oprah Magazine "Erdrich threads a gripping mystery and multilayered portrait of a community through a deeply affecting coming-of-age novel."
- Donna Seaman, Booklist, Starred Review of THE ROUND HOUSE "A stunning and devastating tale of hate crimes and vengeance...Erdrich covers a vast spectrum of history, cruel loss, and bracing realizations. A preeminent tale in an essential American saga."
- Publishers Weekly, Starred Review of THE ROUND HOUSE "The story pulses with urgency as she [Erdrich] probes the moral and legal ramifications of a terrible act of violence."
- Library Journal, Starred Review of THE ROUND HOUSE "Erdrich skillfully makes Joe's coming-of-age both universal and specific...the story is also ripe with detail about reservation life, and with her rich cast of characters, Erdrich provides flavor, humor and depth. Joe's relationship with his father, Bazil, a judge, has echoes of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD."
- BookPage, Cover/Feature Review "Riveting...One of Erdrich's most suspenseful novels.... It vividly portrays both the deep tragedy and crazy comedy of life."
- Jane Ciabattari, Boston Globe "Each new Erdrich novel adds new layers of pathos and comedy, earthiness and spiritual questing, to her priceless multigenerational drama. THE ROUND HOUSE is one of her best — concentrated, suspenseful, and morally profound."
- Austin American-Statesman "Louise Erdrich's prose is spare, precise, smooth...
