Book Review: "The Sentence" by Louise Erdrich

*Spoiler warning!*

4.5/5 stars

I was listening to a podcast episode recently that described our collective pandemic moment as a sort of disjointedness, that such crises like COVID-19 have disconnected us from the future we envisioned for ourselves, leaving us adrift in time. This disjointedness is a very powerful presence in The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. 

The Sentence is a story of an indigenous Minnesota woman, Tookie, whose life was upended first by a stint in jail, then by the COVID-19 pandemic and the concurrent haunting of the bookstore she now works at by a dead customer (Flora). As someone who doesn't believe in ghosts, I interpreted this haunting as more psychological than the presence of a specter in a horror novel (not that the horror was any less real). 

And after thinking about the book's title more, it made the book's various threads come together, the "sentence" representing everything from Tookie's fierce love of books, her incarceration, her experience of COVID-19, and a personal sentence of suffering from unresolved childhood traumas. (She didn't have a great childhood. Absent father, addicted mother, poverty, the works.)

Anyways, armchair psychoanalysis aside, Erdrich's magical realism-infused story was written beautifully, in a hypnotic, almost haphazard way that ended up fitting together nicely in the end that evoked for me Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. It was beautiful for all the good, bad, and in-between The Sentence contained. 

As all good books do, they transport you back (or forward) in time so that the reader feels very much a part of the story, if not a main character, then a peripheral one. The Sentence took me back to 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, a year I would prefer to forget for many reasons. I felt so powerfully that I was back there with Tookie and her friends and family that I had to take occasional breaks so I wouldn't feel overwhelmed. 

The fear and uncertainty, a constant sense of dread. Empty store shelves. Overwhelmed hospitals. The increasing popularity of curbside pickup at all sorts of establishments (my library being no exception to that). Keep six feet apart, masks, hand sanitizers. George Floyd. Black Lives Matter demonstrations. Oh, and Australia and California are literally on fire.

All of that was a visceral experience, from the events of 2020 themselves to the physical, emotional, and mental impacts.

It's no wonder that Tookie felt under pressure in various dimensions, from the external threat of COVID and continuing discrimination against people with black and brown skin to the suddenly manifest presence of Flora, a dead woman who won't leave her alone. 

Can Tookie shake her ghost? How does everything play out for her and her loved ones during such chaotic times?

All I can say, before I proceed to spoil anything else, is to read The Sentence. What a powerful novel! 

--BookOwl