![]() ![]() A real bookstore worker writing a book about the store’s most annoying customer? That had potential. Though I’ve never read Erdrich’s work before I learned that she actually owns a bookstore and so that was a point in her favour. I keep reading them because people keep telling me about them. Despite this (or maybe because of it) I don’t generally enjoy books set in bookstores or about bookstores. I’ve spent a large portion of my adult life working in bookstores, both with used and new books. It addresses the prison system, the police force, racial injustice, family dynamics, the place of books in modern society. ![]() It delves into issues of race, of ownership, of colonialism. ![]() All of that is present in The Sentence but Louise Erdrich takes it so much deeper and while the book definitely has humour, it also has so much warmth and punch and decisiveness. I went into it knowing that it was set in a bookstore, that the bookstore was haunted by their most annoying customer, and that part of it was set during lockdown in 2020. This book was so much more than I expected. The Sentence – Louise Erdrich (Harper, 2021) ![]()
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