I read some of Louise Erdrich's work in college and really liked her, so when I saw one of her novels at a used book store, it seemed logical to pick it up. Erdrich is part Native American, and her narratives always somehow involved the culture, whether it's a main focus or just subtly woven into the text as background. Her writing is beautiful, like poetry, her characters are hauntingly real, and the story is absolutely alluring, laced with humor and tragedy.
Readers get a shockingly authentic view into a marriage that's clearly over, but Irene (the model wife) and Gil (the famous artist husband) aren't able to accept or confront what's right in front of them, using their obsession with each other as a form of denial. Irene ignores her husband's abuse-- towards her and towards their three children-- partly because of her dependence on alcohol. But the misery is countered by endearing moments that are falsely optimistic. Throughout the narrative, the children's disconnect with their parents and the traumatic effects of their parents' ruthless battles become more and more evident, and Irene's blindness to it just furthers a poignant insight that the daughter leaves readers with at the end (but I can't give away those words, because they'd give away too much of the ending).
Through the writer's tight focus on the family's grim drama, the doom and humor is conveyed in a way that make this novel completely tragic and beautiful, and easily made Erdrich one of my favorite writers.
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