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This book has a hold of me �� I won’t go so far as to say that it’s haunting me, however apt that might be �� and I feel that it’s not going to let go until I write about it. So here goes.

The first thing I’ll say is that I (almost) invariably love whatever Erdrich writes. There have been two exceptions: 1) Future Home of the Living God, which I felt had a wickedly strong core premise but faltered in the overtly political comment it wanted to make; and 2) Shadow Tag, which was a deeply personal story for Erdrich about the end of her marriage, and �� while I appreciated it for what it was, I missed the richness and depth offered by her usual themes/universe.

I find it noteworthy that I should have such a strong, positive response to The Sentence, going so far as to (as I say below) consider it one of her finest works, given that it shares more in common with two of my least fave Erdrich novels than it does with the rest of them.

First, this novel is deeply personal; even autofictional. Set in Minneapolis, in a bookstore modelled after Erdrich’s own, owned by a character named Louise who goes on a book tour at the beginning of the pandemic �� Erdrich puts herself directly in the story.

Then, we trace the path of the events in Minneapolis through the pandemic to November 2020 and including the murder of George Floyd and subsequent upheaval. So this is social realism to the max �� done, however, with Erdrich’s great artistry, poetry, subtlety and depth. There is nothing heavy-handed or didactic (well, there is one small bit about Native women’s imprisonment stats, but I forgave it immediately as it flowed so naturally from the story and from the character telling it).

Then, we get the Erdrichian stuff that we count on: a strong Indigenous-centred story; a great cast of characters (omg, Tookie �� I love her so much); a ghost (I hesitate to call it magical realism because that de-Indigenizes it and it is so much more than a mere ghost story, tapping into centuries of history and millennia of ways of being and knowing). We get humour and whimsy side-by-side with serious stuff, including themes of racism, oppression, “pretendians�� i.e. oppression via appropriation, some history lessons, commentary on the absolutely godawful and traumatizing culture of imprisonment and police violence and need for reform, plus personal trauma, institutional trauma, and intergenerational trauma. Oh, and a WHOLE LOTTA BOOK references including, and most delightfully to me (and I’m sure to Cherie Dimaline), reference to the rougarou myth via Dimaline’s Empire of Wild. These references are woven in so seamlessly to the tale and mean so many things in so many different layers of the story that it’s a thing of sheer metafictional beauty.

There are moments of the most beautiful extended metaphor and lyricism that I literally had to stop the audio and take a breath, then relisten and relisten.

I was struck, and keep thinking about, how she managed to pull this off. It’s all done by Erdrich at the absolute top of her writing game, like hands down bar none uneffingbelievable how she takes so many disparate strands and macramés them all together, in a delightful sweetgrass braid �� or maybe a beaded tapestry is a better image.

It’s not just themes and characters, not just exquisite writing at the sentence level, it’s almost multiple literary genres �� ghost story; social realism; autofiction; Indigenous story-telling; historical drama; family drama; metafiction �� all pulled into one masterwork.

I know she won the Pulitzer for The Night Watchman, and deservedly so. And I know that all these awards and end-of-year best-of lists are invariably flawed and incomplete and leave so many out but lemme tell ya, this deserves its place on all of them.

And finally, P.S. �� consumed by audio and as is typical, read by Erdrich herself and there is NO ONE I’d rather have tell me her stories. It seems an essential part of the authenticity of her voice.

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A gazillion stars for this, imho Erdrich's finest since LaRose or maybe even since The Plague of Doves, and that is saying a lot. Absolutely exquisitely read by the author, too.

Maybe will come back with a better review later, but right now am entirely speechless and awestruck.