Community in recovery

With trepidation I open the new Louise Erdrich novel. If it’s as astonishing as her award-winning The Round House I’m in for a ride; if it’s not then I’ll be severely disappointed. No pressure then. Let’s begin. Set on a Native American reservation, and opening with a tragedy affecting the wider Ojibwe community, this is typical Erdrich territory.

While hunting deer, Landreaux Iron accidentally shoots a fiveyear-old boy and kills him.

He and his wife observe an old tribal custom, giving their son to the bereaved family as a way of atoning for Landreaux’s mistake.

The child is to serve as a solution to the problem affecting the community.

So this story is about that child, six-year-old LaRose, but it is also about his family; his best friend; his best friend’s family; the local priest; his step-brother’s father; his ancestor, the original LaRose; his grandmother, another LaRose; and her cohorts at the Elders Lodge retirement village.

With such a large cast of characters it can be tricky to keep

LaRose

a grasp on them all, especially as they are a slippery lot.

This is a community in recovery from addiction, from colonisation, from neglect and from abuse, but it is also joyous and supportive.

Compassion glows in Erdrich’s writing, her language sparkles and wounds.

Some of the most humorous moments are the descriptions of family life.

The teen sisters having an athome beauty spa complain that with their mayonnaise hair wraps they ’smell like freakin’ sandwiches’.

The more poignant moments relate to drug and alcohol dependence.

Romeo’s constant hunt for prescription drugs is both sad and funny, especially when he visits the women at the Elders Lodge to steal their theirs.

They are onto him and concoct a special mix, after which Romeo hallucinates for days.

Josette says ‘everybody in their school had something awful happen someplace in their family’ and this is true everywhere. Grief is universal. Drenched with history, the novel travels back to 1839, when the first LaRose is sold by her mother for alcohol, to a local white trader who then abuses her.

Her narrative painfully exposes the injustice and cruelty meted out to Native Americans. But the first LaRose is a bewitching character, tough and resourceful.

Erdrich’s characters are strongly drawn, but Father Travis is never fully convincing.

He is a lynchpin of the community, privy to their secrets, but his illicit love affair falls flat.

Tension builds as Landreaux’s nemesis Romeo attempts to discover the truth of what really happened on the day of the tragedy.

The denouement provides a startling climax.

LaRose is magnificent; Louise Erdrich confirms her place as a masterful storyteller. Hooray.

Gribben is from The Women’s Bookshop