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Just magnificent and so SO funny. I've only read a few Erdrichs but her humor is one of the things that stands out most to me about her writing.

So does her brilliant writing of teens. The teenagers in this book (like in the darker "Round House") behave in deeply foolish but plausible ways, particularly Kismet, who absolutely should not be getting engaged to someone she finds annoying and yet is seduced by the prospect of love and devotion. Most of the characters in this book, unlike in "The Round House," for instance, are basically decent; at the worst they are scared and self-serving. And while this doesn't stop them from making terrible decisions, we can understand them.

Erdrich also evokes the exact moment of the financial crash in 2008 brilliantly, through the lives of normal people who are scared about their precarious finances and jobs. This, combined with her incredible rendering of the natural world, especially her attention to the details of farming practices, roots this novel in the the the wider world and in the earth itself, giving it a broader sense of heft and scope than its central teen marriage fiasco might belie. But of course that's how life is: small (but large) absurdities embedded in the whole big world.

I also appreciated that Erdrich chose not to foreground a Native political issue in this novel, as she has in others � it is her prerogative to not write about grand historical tragedies in every book � but that she seamlessly incorporated how the Native identities of some of her main characters affect the town's wider social dynamics and smaller interpersonal dynamics, and threaded in historical context for this also. Of course, our relationship with the land reaches back deep into the history of the indigenous people on this continent; all art is political. But I also want our great artists to be able to write about whatever they want with whatever approach to a subject moves them at a given time.

Just a tremendous joy of a book. It is such a privilege to read a novel and feel that you are in the hands of a master.