This is a character driven book. The writing was good and drew me into the story. The character development is really good. This book will take you on a ride

A Native American woman has been convicted of a horrible crime. While in prison books prove her salvation so when she is unexpectedly released she finds a job in a bookshop though has to contend with the resident ghost.

Great characters, a quirky story and plenty of humour juxtaposed with powerful messages of redemption, family and racism.

Set in a bookshop, there are reading lists, unusual customer demands and the ghost.

With events taking place over just one year, the inclusion of the Covid pandemic and the killing of George Floyd make this a very contemporary and poignant read.

I read The Sentence and was super excited to pick it up as it was a @womensprize shortlist from 2022 which I hadn’t got round to reading.

Annoyingly it took me about a week to read the first 50 pages as I just couldn’t get into it, 48 hours before the book club meet I managed to binge the next 150 pages and was abit more invested but was really hoping the fellow bookclub attendees could convince me to either finish it or DNF it. Three days later I’m still about 50 pages from the end…

Interestingly, I really enjoyed the book club discussion and this really helped me to engage and enjoy the book more. The books seemed to divide people with some lovers, some haters and some abit meh.

Things I loved :
• the double play on The Sentence meaning
• Tookie’s book recommendations
• The theme of motherhood
• The Native American culture
• The bookshop
• Tookie’s marriage
• The relevance of the everyday people in our lives
• The references to food

Things I disliked -
• Covid
• The ghost story
• The blurb
• The cover

Notes -
This isn’t a ghost story so don’t understand why it’s trying to sell itself as one, this massively put me off reading it and if I was a ghost story fan I would have been disappointed

The book felt really disjointed and like the first 100 pages had been written and put aside and then picked up during the pandemic and finished with that included.

It’s based on Louise’s bookshop, this is a fantastic setting but sometimes felt a little autobiographical or self indulgent for a fiction book.

Nothing really happens in this book, it’s quite drawn out at times and Tookie is a really unreliable narrator and leaves a lot open for interpretation.

I am surprised it made the shortlist but the panel could have related with it more than me especially if booksellers and the cultures references were informative and provided a new perspective.

What was it like to work through Covid lockdowns in a haunted Minneapolis bookstore? What is the indigenous experience in Minnesota? Amazing work by esteemed author Erdrich is compelling, readable, unputdownable. So good.

Ever since "Love Medicine" I have been a fan of Louise Erdrich,  love all of her writing however different in subject. So I am probably biased, just finished her latest "The Sentence" and am a little sad to leave the crazy community around Tookie, the narrator, behind. Tookie, a Native American,  lives in Minneapolis with her patchwork family and works in a haunted bookshop with her friends where the ghost of deceased Flora, one of  their best but most annoying costumers makes a daily appearance causing havoc.

Erdrich somehow manages to keep a witty, funny tone throughout the novel despite covering the seriousness of the pandemic, the race riots and Tookies troubled past. In real life Erdrich has her own bookshop in Minneapolis and I loved how that part of her life flows into this novel, including book recommendations. A real treat to read this wonderfully weird story with some characters that are still stuck in my head. Loved it!

Wow!! Just wow!! I’m speechless and that doesn’t happen very often.This is just completely addictive and impossible to put down.

This is a powerfully written story about a year in the life of Tookie, an Objibwe woman in Minneapolis, running a bookstore and being haunted by the ghost of one of her regular customers.

We start with Tookie in the bookstore and then are filled in on how she came to be there and her traumatic, formative experiences to date. Then we come to the ‘main’ plot of Flora – an indigenous-wannabe – haunting Tookie’s place of work. Except that the haunting isn’t the heart of the story at all.

Instead, this is a character-driven story about indigenous identities and cultural heritage; complicated personal relationships; Covid pandemic anxiety; the impact of George Floyd’s murder on POC and police communities (and the places they overlap), and more. It is about one turbulent year in the life of a troubled, struggling, modern American woman, and how she grapples with the internal and external conflicts she faces.

I found Tookie a little difficult to connect with as a main character, less due to her different life experiences and more because they have – naturally and understandably – made her quite prickly and defensive. I did get a better feel for her as the story-year progressed and she gradually developed with the new experiences along the way.

The writing is excellent and atmospheric and the issues raised are timely and important, but I do think it is better to come to this novel with the right expectations. I wouldn’t describe it as ‘wickedly funny’ (although there is humour within) or a ghost story (ditto), and I think if you go into the story expecting some sort of paranormal cosy mystery with wacky hijinks then you risk missing the fascination of this dive into the heart and mind of a difficult but infinitely interesting main character.

I had put off reading The Sentence as I wasn't sure a ghost story was really for me but this was one of the best novels I've read this year - a novel about books and reading and surviving the pandemic and living in a blended family and cultural and racial identity and appropriation.

It's hard to know how to present this book. It has so much in it. The emotion, the situations and the history bound in it is not that easy to unpack and talk about separately.
For once, maybe I will begin with the story. The first quarter of the narrative introduces us to our lead protagonist, Tookie. She is an Ojibwe woman who gets caught in a complicated drug situation. Her trust in the people around her is her undoing, and the colour of her skin does not help matters when it comes to the justice system. However, the bulk of the story is when she gets released and the 2020 situation in Minneapolis.
Luckily for her, Tookie has people looking out for her. She spends her time incarcerated reading, which introduces a whole new world to her. She finds love and a job once she gets out. By the time 2020 comes around, she is settled in life with a few minor familial issues.
Things start to go bad when she finds out that a persistent customer of their bookstore has died. Tookie feels haunted by her, literally. She is not the only one, at least as time goes by. In this backdrop, the pandemic occurs. The idea of heritage and belonging, as well as the history of the US and what they built on, is then explored.
I learnt a lot from this book, and the style of narration took some getting used to, but by the end, I felt like I 'got' it. There was a lot of angst, grief, and helplessness woven into the plot. It is more about everything than about any one thing. It was a lot to take in. Once I got Tookie's thought process and could imagine the life she led, along with all the people who make an appearance in the story, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would when I began.
This is not a book that one can go in without warning. Only if a reader is prepared for the kind of content they are about to encounter, I feel, they will be able to better appreciate the read. I was not sure what I was picking up when I did, and I think that might have impacted my experience. It is a well-talked-about book in both the reading circles and the book blogging ones. I may be late in getting to it, but I am glad I picked it up. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a serious book with its own small lighter moments, but knowing that the pandemic/lockdown features here as well.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

"...people rarely made her happy. But books did."

Do you ever look at a book & feel an instant connection? A vibe where you know it's going to give you more than you can ever give back? This was my first reaction to #TheSentence by #LouiseErdrich. Something about it called to me.

"‘Every world-destroying project disrupts something intimate, tangible, and Indigenous,’ said Asema."

It's actually quite difficult to review The Sentence because I don't want to appropriate a culture I have no rights to & I don't want to spoil the experience for others. Let me stick to the basics. We meet Tookie as she commits a crime that feels sublimely ridiculous. We follow, briefly, her time in prison and we emerge into Minneapolis, September 2019. We all know where this is going.

On the 2022 end of the global pandemic, it feels still to be too early to read pandemic fiction. All things considered, I made it through relatively unscathed but the last two years have broken something in me. Something indefinable.

As Tookie so perfectly puts it, "I want to forget this year, but I’m also afraid I won’t remember this year."

The last two years have been traumatic but I haven't had to endure them with the additional racism faced by black or brown or Asian people. So much has been lost to c*vid, to political bullshit, to gun violence, to police violence. It's hard to see reason. Erdrich, however, tells us Tookie's story with such generosity of heart. Even when so much is going wrong, there is still community. Communion with friends, nature & spirit.

"My heart, my beautiful fire.
My heart, my tree."

Please read this book. If you can, buy from your little independent bookseller. Amaz*n doesn't need your cash.

I loved the premise of this and this was a creepy read. But it lost some momentum along the way. Great characterisation and dialogue. This is a well-written story and I would read more by this author.

This novel starts as a crime story - and leads in an absolutely different direction trope-wise (which, I must say, is absolutely brilliant since the definitions of ‘crime', ‘criminal' and ‘justice' in the paradigm of 21st century American reality are central for the whole concept of the book).

Following Tookie, a woman with Ojibwe heritage living in Minneapolis, the story elaborates on what it means to be a Native American, a female, a person who had to face the worst of the US justice and incarceration system. But also it tells the story of what it's like to be a lover, a mother, a friend, a neighbour, a student, and, of course, a book devotee (hence, the double meaning behind the title) in the times of COVID, police violence, Trumpism and generational shifts.

The narrative of ‘The Sentence’ is truly three-dimensional, with the real events being foreshadowed by the hints of supernatural and augmented by literary references (the book lists and recommendations in this book deserve their own praise!). Despite the hard topics that are raised in the novel, it leaves a uniquely hart-warming feeling - particularly thanks to the found family motives.

The first Louise Erdrich I read, The Sentence is a multi-layered fascinating read which had me hooked till the end. With the complex character of Tookie and an engaging cast of well-written background characters, this book never went where I was expecting it to, blending the fiction of the bookshop coming and goings (and hauntings) with the real life pandemic and Black lives Matter Movement. This was the first book I read about the pandemic and rather than being uncomfortably close as I was expecting, it was instead intensely relatable and comforting that the experience of living through these historical events was much similar to mine in the UK. I enjoyed the way many stories were interwoven into one narrative and the reality of long term relationships as ever evolving, which felt true to me. Tookie and Pollux have such enduring passion and connection, and despite facing real struggles, that they worked through it rather than chuck in the towel like a lesser book might fall back on for drama, felt realistic throughout. The lyrical writing, littered with book recommendations, was truly enjoyable and deserving of the various plaudits it is now receiving. Thanks NetGalley for this free copy which has officially been a gateway to now the backlist of this incredible author.

I absolutely adored this book. I loved Lousie Erdrich's early books but haven't read one for years. When I picked this up I was instantly transported into her world. Her writing is spare and luminous, with an amazing sense of place. Tookie is a fascinating character, a tough native American woman who was wrongfully incarcarated for years but now lives with her partner and works in an indigenous bookstore (similar to Erdrich's own). The book is set through in the first year of the pandemic, and makes many references to current events, but believably and thoughtfully. It is about family, tradition, racism and history, but is not at all heavy-handed.

There is a touch of magical realism, as Tookie is being haunted by the ghost of one of her bookstore customers, and her partner Pollux is a tribal cop who performs ceremonial rituals. The matter-of-fact way that ghosts and rituals were described was fascinating, and surprisingly realistic. I loved the description of Tookie and Pollux' relationship, and the family drama that is introduced when her stepdaughter and baby move into the house.

One of the most interesting books I've read in a while, and I also loved the book recommendations scattered throughout the text, and the reading list at the end.

A tough and immersive read: events outside Tookie's story life ...like George Floyd murder or pandemic .. are drawn into the fictional life .. and the voice tellibg us her difficult life is grounded, thoughtful and allusive .. of feelings and injustices even the moment when she finds her drug-addicted mother dead, leaning on her blankets we are moved and understand. Imprisoned for transporting a corpse , this can be a metaphor for dire state of world she navigates as best she can . .books and the store she works in are haunted by a now deceased customer and suddenly Tookie sees what she was about too .. things gell and fragment but her voice and observations (of her police man partner .. in fact, the one who'd arrested her!)make sense, told in matter of fact way with great diaogue

The Sentence is my second novel by Louise Erdrich, the first being The Night Watchman which won the Pulitzer last year. I loved that book and its excellent storytelling, but also had some issues with it, namely that it took off on lots of different tangents that were never really resolved.

Even from reading only two of her books it's perfectly clear to me that Erdrich is a storyteller. She can weave a narrative and create characters with depth and soon you're immersed and wondering where she's going to take you next. The Sentence began like that for me, but soon lost its way, and kept losing it again and again throughout.

Most stories have a conflict or dilemma that needs to be resolved, but here it didn't feel that there was enough of that to sustain a 400 page novel. The characters were just kind of dragged along by events. It seems to me that this is a book that tries to come to terms with the various things that have happened in the past few years - the pandemic, the death of George Floyd and the resulting riots and protests - but whether it makes a coherent novel is questionable in my opinion.

As with The Night Watchman, I appreciate how Erdrich incorporates Ojibwe folklore and culture without apology or explanation, which is just as it should be. In The Sentence the ghost of a former customer haunts a bookstore and nobody bats an eyelid because it is perfectly acceptable and understandable that this would happen in Native American culture and I love that.

But overall it was far too rambling a story and felt (to me) that Erdrich sat down one day and began writing not really knowing where she was going, and I think that really shows. Also, there was a character called Laurent who was a total asshole and I was 100% done with everyone being crazy about him.

Anyway, I think my next Erdrich read will probably be one of her earlier books - Love Medicine, Tracks, The Plague of Doves or LaRose - and it'll be interesting to see how they compare to her more recent work.

This was such a compelling and ultimately uplifting book. Dealing with haunting in all of its guises, the novel follows Tookie, an Ojibwe woman working in an independent bookstore in Minneapolis during 2020. As one of the first books that I have read featuring not only the Covid pandemic, but also the murder of George Floyd, I thought that Louise Erdrich did a phenomenal job of capturing the fear and anger of the time. I also loved the way in which books played such a key role in the narrative and how important they were to Tookie in particular. The familial relationships are fascinating and authentic and the humour throughout was a welcome relief. Overall, I found this to be a thoughtful and captivating read and I would highly recommend it.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This was so different from what I expected! I had not read anything by Luise Erdrich before, and so this took me a bit by surprise - I thought it would be a Gothic novel about ghosts, but it was so much more. This was so funny, and so on-point in its commentary about the prison system, racial inequality, the treatment of native people, while also capturing perfectly the feeling of going through the pandemic in its first year. I was impressed with how much the author managed to pack into a novel that was such a pleasure to read. Also I must have gotten a dozen new book recommendations from it. Really incredible read!

'The Sentence' is hard to describe. Part love story, part ghost story, it's a novel with a lot of heart. On her release from prison, our protagonist Tookie marries Pollux, the police officer who arrested her and starts working in a small Indie bookshop. Unfortunately, when one of the bookshop's difficult customers dies, she starts haunting Tookie, and won't leave. Meanwhile, the world outside is in chaos, with the murder of George Floyd and the arrival of Covid 19. Louise Erdrich manages to bring together these many strands and creates an engaging narrative, that is amongst other things, an homage to books. Highly enjoyable.

Pure, vintage, classic Erdrich. Wonderfully limned characters, educational material on Indigenous People and their history, an involving plot. But with this one, appears a difference. This time there's a ghostly presence in the bookstore, and the action flows between November 2019-November 2020, set against what it meant to be a small business owner during this unprecedented pandemic and, most vividly, the murder of George Floyd and its effect on residents of Minneapolis, particularly to people of color. The owner of the store, a version of Ms. Erdrich herself, is not the main character. That role is taken by Tookie, a woman with a complicated history and relationship to her husband who works in the bookstore. There were passages that reduced me to tears, which doesn't often happen. Interwoven in the plot are some favorite books including lists at the end. I've been reading Ms. Erdrich for over 30 years, and feel this is a favorite book by a favorite author.