Louise Erdrich has been on my TBR list for some time - why did I wait so long? I absolutely loved this book, flew through it and will probably give it a second reading as well as recommending for my book group. The writing is beautiful. I'm not sure lyrical is the right word, but there are certainly lyrical elements to it. It totally captivated me. There were sentences and paragraphs that I read over again just to enjoy the way the language was used. The story contains so much - it is very, very contemporary, taking in the response to the Covid pandemic and the drastic changes it made to our lives, the murder of George Floyd and the upsurge of outrage afterwards. We have a bookshop and its customers (who doesn't love to read about books and bookshops) , a haunting, a mysterious and unnerving book, the mystery of Tookie's name and where it came from, reference to indigenous native American rituals and beliefs (fascinating) and main characters who live life in their own way and on their own terms. I was sorry to have to leave them behind. I will definitely be reading more from this author. All in all, a wonderful reading experience. This is my voluntary review of a free copy of the book.

This is a strange, strange book, but one which I found increasingly interesting, enjoyable and profound. The novel is narrated by a Native American bookseller, Tookie, who begins by describing her arrest and imprisonment some years before after helping her friends dispose of a body illegally. After this, the action moves forward to 2019, by which time Tookie has been released, is married to the Native American policeman Pollux, and is working at Birchbank Books in Minneapolis (the real-life independent bookshop which specialises in Native American literature is owned by Louise Erdrich, who appears as a minor character within her own novel.) From then, the main focus of the novel is the death of Flora, a regular customer at the bookstore, and her subsequent haunting of Tookie. Flora is a white woman who has tried to insinuate herself into the Native American community, and over the course of the novel, we learn more both about her past and Tookie's, as well as the treatment of Native Americans in both the past and present. The novel also concerns itself with the events of 2020, particularly the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the protests that follow this (Erdrich here powerfully shows how both Black and Native American people have been repeated victims of police brutality). There are also a number of other interesting plot strands, including Tookie's strained relationship with her grown-up adopted daughter Hetta, and Hetta's relationship with the father of her baby.

This all sounds like rather a lot, and it is, but I found each of these elements very interesting in their own right, and the noel remains very readable overall, although occasionally I lost track of some details. The writing is sometimes tender and moving, and at other times very funny, but taken together it offers a thought-provoking exploration of the different ways in which we are haunted, as well as a hymn to the importance of books and bookstores - I particularly enjoyed the delight of the author's character when the bookstore is given "essential worker status" at the start of the pandemic: "It means our state considers books essential in this time."

This was the first book I have read by Louise Erdirch but I am now keen to read more of her work. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC of this book to review.

Louise Erdrich cooks up an off-the-wall plot which is a masterful mix of celebration of the mundane, of friendship, family, work, and a record of history being made, taking in as it does both the George Floyd protests and Covid. Set in a Minneapolis bookshop, it is both a love letter to local businesses and their customers (Erdrich herself owns a bookshop) and a mystery: why is ex-customer Flora haunting the heroine Tookie? As the narrative develops, hauntings of all sorts are uncovered. There’s a sly humour running through the narrative which doesn’t detract from the seriousness of the subjects. The whole story is steeped in Native American customs, history and folklore, whilst also referencing an impressive range of literature. The bibliography at the end was a lovely touch. I’ve not read Louise Erdrich before but she reminds me of Barbara Kingsolver, covering complex topics with deftness.

Wow - what a book! So much covered in this tome and all of it brilliantly linked together and however madcap the story seems it never tipped over in to melodrama.
I was't sure I was ready to read a covid-19 pandemic book but everything rang so true and the 'on the ground' coverage of the initial Black Lives Matter protests in the US were eye-opening. This has made my top books of 2021

I was gripped by this right from the start right up until the final page, it was a compelling read. It was well written with a good storyline and well written characters. I really enjoyed reading her unique take on the year 2020 and the things that we encountered duing that terrible year.

Louise Erdrich's books always feel like a gift she offers to the world and this one is no different. This new novel is quite the tour de force, both entertaining and insightful about the times we're living in. Erdrich is a meticulous observer of our world and makes every subject she tackles thought-provoking and ultimately enriching, from her characters' experience of the Covid pandemic to the murder of George Floyd by the police and her depiction of Indigenous culture. The Sentence is a fantastic ghost story, a beautiful tribute to bookselling and an astute social novel. Be sure to have a notebook at hand while reading it, as you won't believe the number of books Tookie, the main protagonist, will make you want to read!

This is the first book I read by Louise Erdrich and I loved this so much. Narrator Tookie gets a dictionary when she is in prison for stealing a dead body (which happened to also be carrying drugs), and finds her love of reading, re-creating a whole library in her head - "the most important skill I'd gained in prison was how to read with murderous attention". Finally freed thanks to her lawyer's efforts, she reads, she explores restaurants, keeping a list of soups she tries in her diary, settles down with the tribal officer who arrested her, Pollux. She gets a job in a bookshop specialising in Native American literature, "more than a place, (...) a nexus, a mission, a work of art, a calling, a sacred craziness, a slice of eccentricity".

One of her most annoying customer, Flora, a while woman fascinating by Native Americans and keen to claim that heritage for herself, dies "on the second of November, All Souls' Day, when the fabric between the worlds is thin as tissue and easily torn", and begins to haunt the bookshop. Tookie can hear her clothes rustling in the shop, her bracelets moving against the counter. Books fall to the floor, mysteriously.

Halfway through the book, Covid appears - not named for another while, at first a "novel virus", forcing the bookshop to close. I have read a few books recently and when Covid is mentioned I often found it cringy - but this was... smooth, and at times seemed nearly mundane: the narrator and her husband worry about wearing the right kind of face masks, go buy noodles and diapers to prepare for the lockdown. Louise Erdrich is brilliant at reminding you of the little fear at the back of your mind - "Anything and everything might kill you. Spectral, uncanny. Deadly, but not. It was terrifying. It was nothing". I remember how at the beginnings, we knew less and we were wondering if we could catch it by touching door handles, if we should disinfect groceries.
Then George Floyd's murder - her colleague and her step-daughter attend protests, marches. The city burns.

I loved the writing, I loved the narrator (and the author's) love of books, her appetite for them, as if each moment has it own book, like a sommelier would know what wine to serve with a certain meal. Helpfully, there is a list at the end of the book with all the books mentioned in the novel - I enjoyed that. I enjoyed how she managed to bring me into a whole new universe (not new to everyone - as there are many autobiographical aspects - Louise Erdrich does own a bookshop, and the owner of the novel's bookshop is also called Louise) while being so anchored in time - the pandemic, the protests, the injustice. Weirdly it isn't grim - the book is about love, books, ghosts, identity, but it feels warm and cosy...

Really loved it, and would definitely recommend. I plan to read Louise Erdrich's other books, so I cannot say how this one compares to the previous ones, but it is not a bad place to start.

I love a flawed narrator and Erdrich did this one well. We get the crazy, the tough, the soft, the loving all rolled into one.

Erdrich sets this narrator smack in the middle of a ghost story set in a cosy bookbookshop in Minneapolis in the year of Covid 19, George Floyd and the riots. Good mix, bad mix, who is to say, if we believe the Covid, Floyd and the riots because all of us saw them on our screens from our sofa than adding in a ghost is not so fantastical is it?

Reading Erdrich a native Minnesotan, reads different than reading an article in the news. Here we have a Native American writing with feeling and intelligence about the Native American experience and what George Floyd meant to them, a perspective I did not see in any other news article. How a system based on theft, greed and disparagement breeds only injustice.

An ARC gently provided by author/publisher via Netgalley

“Many books and movies had in their plots some echoes of my secret experiences with Flora. Places haunted by unquiet Indians were standard. Hotels were disturbed by Indians whose bones lay underneath the basements and floors—a neat psychic excavation of American unease with its brutal history. Plenty of what was happening to me happened in fiction. Unquiet Indians. What about unquiet settlers? Unquiet wannabes?... Maybe the bookstore was located on some piece of earth crossed by mystical lines”


This is a novel that defies any expectation. Tooke is an ex-junkie who ended up with a 60-year sentence for abducting the corpse of her friend’s lover on her behalf. In jail she learned to read voraciously and once out because of a shortening of her sentence she married Pollux, the cop who had arrested her, and started working for a Minneapolis bookstore specialising in indigenous books -- not too different from Erdrich’s own bookstore. The venue is frequented by individuals who have or claim and indigenous background, among which Flora, a woman with a suspiciously preposterous indigenous past, is one of the most assiduous clients. After her sudden death, she starts haunting the bookshop. Why did she die and why can’t she rest? Was it related to a mysterious manuscript she was reading? The novel revolves around this secret but couldn’t be more different from any ghost story you may have read so far.
Spun around the different meanings of “sentence”, it is a special novel made of cozy conversations around food, of scenes taken from daily life, with a plot unfolding slowly and an intention to mirror the flow of reality. Unique in that here the eerie does not burst out occasionally just to scare and be exorcised, it is made to permeate normality the same way the suppression of indigenous people has been normalised. While partly it reminded me of a romantic comedy with a hint of blockbusters, it still delivers pretty dark moments and truths. it is complex, original read that brings together indigenous culture, American history, sociographic analysis and a close look to our present, the George Floyd case and navigating the pandemic – an accomplished snapshot of legacy and contemporary history and the way history cannot be suppressed. The writing itself is excellent – see the extract above. A must for bibliophiles and librarians for the endless booklists. It unfolds slowly and it is a bit sprawling, something which I also felt for Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle, but with excellent characters, thought-provoking and timely.


My thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I am glad I have read this intriguing, truly ambitious novel (set in 2020 Minneapolis, Covid, George Floyd... ). I had never read Erdrich and she is clearly an interesting writer tackling important issues in an approachable, even humorous, style. Tookie, the indigenous ("not indian, not aboriginal") narrator protagonist, is haunted by the ghost of a client of the bookshop she works in... Flora's haunting and the reasons for her persistence will prove multiple and will finally encompass not only the private life of Tookie but that of the society she lives in...
I found the beginning of the novel totally compelling (the bookseller's backstory is gripping, tragic and comic, real and surreal at the same time), yet even as the overall storyline makes total sense as it develops Tookie's ghost and personal (marriage, stepdaughter...) story into a sort of universal, American ghost story made out of the present politics (MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Fake News, identity politics...) and catastrophes (Covid...), I found it a bit overemphasised and longish in parts. I think I understand the reasons for some repetitions, as they mimicked the actual living of the year... but I would have made some cuts.
In this "ghost story" so to speak, books are salvation (even if some are potentially damming!), literally for Tookie when in jail, and to the many others that people the novel. Books are discussed, recommended, read, rejected... The role of the bookseller and the independent bookshop is key in this story about reading, recognising and remembering... (Louise Endrich is indeed the actual owner of the real Birchbark Books and does appear in the novel just as Louise). As the writer gives you an insight onto the culture of some Native American groups and their interaction with mainstream society, she also allows you to reflect on recent history through the means of a simple yet complex and intelligent story.
Many thanks to Harper Collins via NetGalley for an opportunity to read and review this good novel.

‘There are books that knock you sideways in around 200 pages. Between the covers there exists a complete world. The story is unforgettably peopled and nothing is extraneous. Reading one of these books only takes an hour or two but leaves a lifetime imprint’.

I tried with The Sentence, I really did, but I got to this paragraph at 50% into the book and it just reiterated the fact that it was doing none of those things for me. I’m sad to say it was my first DNF of 2022.

This book was marketed as a ghost story set in a bookshop, which for a book-blogger and bibliophile sounds like a brilliant premise. However, the ghost story isn’t atmospheric or interesting and also takes a side-line to politics and the covid pandemic which seemed a bit of a shame. At 50% I still had no idea where the book was going and realised that I didn’t really care either way – I wasn’t gripped or hooked with the plot to want to find out more.

One of my main issues was the main character, Tookie. Although as a native American woman Tookie should have been a layered and interesting character, I just found that she felt very flat and one dimensional. Events just seemed to happen to her – whether that was going to prison, being released, getting married, starting a job in the bookshop, finding out she had a grandchild or discovering a ghost haunting her workplace. She seemed to keep the reader at arms length and didn’t let us properly into her head. I didn’t feel that I related to her or empathised with her in any way.

The book felt very jumbled as well that didn’t help. Lots of drawn-out conversations that didn’t seem to move the plot forward and then suddenly a major event would be introduced and skimmed over in a sentence which led to me saying ‘wait, what?’ and having to re-read. After reading a spoiler for the end of the book, I don’t think I particularly missed much - the reader asking a question about it also seemed to have missed an important plot point which meant the conclusion made little sense so I think I may have made the right decision in putting it down.

Overall, The Sentence didn’t work for me – with an unrelatable main character and jumbled writing style. Thank you to NetGalley & Little Brown Books UK – Corsaire for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for a (very) honest review.

It's not easy to judge a book in which the author seems totally focused on telling the present (the pandemic, the Black Lives Matters movement in Minneapolis, the life of Native American populations) and then inserts a ghost, which, all things considered, is fine. I, for one, can't help but love a book set in a bookstore and frequented, precisely, by bibliophile ghosts. It was not, however, what I expected.

Non é facile giudicare un libro in cui l'autrice sembra totalmente concentrata a raccontare il presente (la pandemia, il movimento Black lives matters a Minneapolis, la vita delle popolazioni native americane) e poi ci inserisce un fantasma, che ci sta anche bene tutto sommato. Io poi non posso non amare un libro ambientato in una libreria e frequentato, appunto, da fantasmi bibliofili. Non era comunque quello che mi aspettavo peró.

I received from the Publisher a complimentary digital advanced review copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

The extraordinary writer, Louise Erdrich, writes a beautifully crafted and haunting character driven novel that captivates, a blend of fact, fiction and magical realism, that resonates deeply with our contemporary world, the fear, pain and trauma of the pandemic, the brutal murder of George Floyd, the BLM protests, and the ghosts and horror of American history when it comes to Native Americans. It pays homage to books, littered as it is with numerous references to books, and to readers and independent bookstores, Erdrich herself owns one, Birchbark Books in Minnesota, indeed she makes an appearance in the novel. The flawed Tookie is Ojibwe, and the story begins with a mad caper which has Tookie taking the body of Budgie from Mara across state lines for Danae, a friend, only to find herself betrayed and reluctantly arrested by a tribal cop, Pollux.

Tookie ends up in prison after receiving an impossible sentence of 60 years, where a she receives a dictionary from a teacher, as she becoming an avid reader of the books in prison. On her release, facing a challenging future given her ex-con background, she ends up employed at a bookstore, now selling words, turning her life around and moving on from the character she used to be. She has a complicated marriage to Pollux, a compassionate man embedded in Native American life and traditions, he has a niece, Hetta. However, troubles continue to follow her, when a regular customer, Flora dies, she returns to the bookstore as a unwanted ghost, an irritating haunting presence that refuses to leave, with Flora's major focus and concentration on Tookie. Tookie's disturbing and unsettling past comes back to haunt her as she tries to work out what it will take to get the annoying Flora to leave.

This is a powerful and enthralling delight of a story, with a wide range of vibrant and colourful characters, delving into American history, and its present in the form of contemporary realities, such as the BLM, the grief and isolation of the pandemic, raising the question of how we might move on into the future. It speaks of race, love, human sins, redemption, of hope, forgiveness, the power of books, of being a reader, and the importance of bookstores. This is a wonderfully engaging and profound read, full of soul and spirit, humorous, heartbreaking, and so riveting that it left me feeling that I wanted to read it again soon. Highly recommended. Many thanks to the publisher for an ARC.

An immensely enjoyable ghost story that takes place over a year of the narrators life whilst working in a bookstore. The novel is heartwarming and scary. I have never read anything that I can compare it to, definitely a purely original tale.

The question of how much time needs to pass before seismic, era-defining events are able to be successfully captured on the page is surely one many writers are grappling with today – Erdich proves there’s no such thing as ‘too soon’ to write about the pandemic and the wave of protests that followed the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. By wrapping her tale into a timeless, multilayered ghost story (and love story) and populating it with characters who are vulnerable and painfully human, the living history that sits alongside it is even more charged and powerful. A remarkable piece of storytelling.

“From the time of birth to the time of death, every word you utter is part of one long sentence”

This cleverly titled and amusing book starts on All Souls Day 2019 and ends exactly one year later. An Ojibwe woman Tookie, an ex con now married to the man who arrested her, is working in a bookshop in Minneapolis (based on the author’s own book store) when she begins to be haunted by Flora, the bookshop’s most irritating customer who died on All Souls Day.
This tale about the solving of the haunting is so much more with many serious topics running through it including the beginning of the pandemic and the death of George Floyd. It taught me so
much about the history and present day treatment of the
indigenous people.
I enjoyed reading about Tookie’s changing relationships with her family and colleagues, all interesting characters, but most of all this is a story about books and how they can and do change lives.
(Helpfully Erdrich lists all the books mentioned at the end).

Thanks to Little Brown Book Group UK & NetGalley for an ARC

2020 was an extraordinary year everywhere in the world - but even more so in Minnesota. Not only was there the Covid pandemic to contend with, but the city of Minneapolis was the epicentre of the Black Lives Matter protests after the murder there of George Floyd. So it's fortunate that a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist happens to live locally and has used her first hand knowledge of that turbulent period as the backdrop to her latest story.

The principal character of 'The Sentence' is Tookie, a Native American woman who starts the book with one kind of sentence - a prison one - and continues it using the other kind of sentences to make her living as a bookseller. After her period of incarceration, Tookie has built a steady, average life with a good husband and a job she loves. In late 2019, a regular customer at the bookshop dies - possibly after reading something that shocked her - and starts to haunt the store. Soon they have far more than a ghost to worry about, as the virus sweeps the world, followed by protests and riots. Tookie has her own domestic issues to contend with as well, with her difficult stepdaughter arriving home with a surprise for her adoptive parents.

It's one of those books that is difficult to describe in a short synopsis, and difficult to categorise into a genre. There's a magical realist/fantastical element with the ghost story aspect - although of course readers may choose to interpret that how they wish. But despite that being an important part of the narrative, it never really feels like a fantasy. Then there's the social commentary, which of course is a critical part of the novel, but doesn't feel like its reason for existing. It forms a powerful and fascinating backdrop, but doesn't divert from Tookie's own story. The book it strongly reminds me of is Proulx's 'The Shipping News' - not that it has very much obviously in common with it. But that's what I thought of again and again as I read 'The Sentence' so there must be some more subtle cues that caused me to subconsciously equate the two.

What I can say is that the characters were people I came to really care about. Tookie is complex and difficult at times but ultimately someone you want to succeed. I enjoyed the sense of camaraderie between the bookshop employees, and the strength of her family. The setting of the pandemic and the killing of George Floyd struck a lot of chords with me, having recently lived through that time period myself. Hearing about the full impact of the latter on the city of Minneapolis and its residents was particularly interesting. I also liked the cultural setting amongst modern Native Americans - there were lots of interesting snippets of Native American culture and customs which I hadn't known anything about.

It's very easy to read - surprisingly so, for a novel that is so clearly 'literary'. It's always nice to find an author who can write in a stylistic, intellectual way whilst still making it readable and centred on a good story. I found it a very interesting book and the last part very gripping, because of how much I cared about the characters. I was never sure what to make of all the ghost-story elements but it didn't spoil my enjoyment. And it even came with a reading list at the end, including some interesting sounding books I might even add to my to-read list. Along with those, I'll be putting Erdrich's other novels. I'd highly recommend to anyone who enjoys 'literary' novels.

I finished this book two days ago, and it hasn't let go of me yet.

The Sentence covers so much of our recent past, and just as the title can mean different things, the haunting at its center is not only that one annoying customer who won't even let death force her to leave the bookstore.

We are, all of us, haunted to some extent. By things we have done or said, or left undone or unsaid.
By sentences passed on us or sentences we couldn't find words to utter.

Is this a ghost story? Kind of. It's also a story about people and community, the trauma of living through a global pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, the protests in Minneapolis, the power of books to connect people and also the power words have to wound and to heal.

If that feels like a lot for one book to carry, well it could be. It would be if it wasn't written by a storyteller as powerful as Erdrich. The various strands are woven together so skillfully that they serve to amplify the creeping dread Tookie experiences over the course of the story. And, like life, there are also surprising moments of lightness and warmth to keep her, and us, going.

I miss Tookie and her friends and family already, and I'm glad I got to spend time with them.

It’s difficult to place this book in any category, as it covers so much ground - perhaps a little too much for it to be totally convincing, but admirable in its ambition. The story begins with Tookie, the protagonist being incarcerated for a crime she never really planned to commit, and goes on to explore love, redemption, words, books, the experience of American Indians throughout history, a haunting, and the COVID pandemic in the US - I told you it was broad! Although this reviewer had doubts for the first few chapters, the book sorted itself out and became compelling, with the many and various strands being brought together in a satisfying whole towards the end. This is beautifully written, imaginative and intelligent literature, with something for every reader.

A kind of Minneapolis set Armistead Maupin, November 2019-20. With ghosts and books 3.5 rating

I nearly abandoned this quite quickly, not really liking the rather obvious ‘hook ‘em’in’ tragi comedy grime shock beginning

Tookie, apparently a somewhat fearsome Native American woman, a lesbian, somewhat lusty and deranged over her seemingly femme lover, agrees to kidnap the corpse of Danae’s recently dead lover Budgie. Danae and Budgie had had a clearly dysfunctional relationship, illicit substances were also involved. But Budgie had by all accounts cleaned up, and gone back to his previous woman, Mara. (Still with us?) Danae, a recent lottery winner, pleads and begs Tookie to go get her exes corpse after his death in Mara’s arms. And offers her lottery cheque to Tookie.

Things don’t turn out well (we know this right from the start, so, no spoilers) and Tookie ends up doing time.

Fast forward several years

This was the point I was going to abandon, finding that beginning contrived

Once her custodial sentence is served, Tookie, back in the community, saved to some extent by books, and now working in a local bookshop, a completely different feel and trajectory develops.

And got me involved

There was almost a ‘Tales of the City’ feel – a lot of warmth, humour, challenging but believable relationships amongst a somewhat different ‘outside the mainstream’ of society.

This centres around Native Americans, and geographically is set in an area where many are, or would like to claim, Native American ancestry. So there is quite a lot about the history and the culture of non-European ancestry, and about the appropriation of land, and culture in the creation of ‘America’

The cataclysmic events of the last year of Trump’s destructive presidency, the death of George Floyd, the emergence of Covid, all make their presence felt.

These happenings are experienced personally, by the central characters, and in the wider cultural community of the book

I got very quickly involved (after that beginning) with a cast of characters who were layered, messy, complex.

Inevitably, much centres around the bookshop as a hub and centre of the Native American community (the author herself owns just such an independent bookshop, and is of Native American heritage) As an avid reader, I loved the conversations about books, the bookie recommendations which were being shared – and the submersion into a different culture and its beliefs and norms

Yes, there’s quite a lot of ‘issue polemics’ here, but well woven within characters.

The ‘supernatural’ elements seem almost normal, -‘sure there are unquiet spirits’, and of a piece with the culture of the community

Yes, the book could be said to be a bit of a hotch potch of ‘abouts’, but it worked for me, once that odd beginning was done

I rated this 3.5, and raised it to 4