I have been reading Louise Erdrich for over a decade. She has been writing novels for over three decades. She never lets me down. The new novel, set in familiar territory, the remaining Ojibwe lands of North Dakota, is engaged in spanning: generations, cultures, the spiritual world, and the moral universe. If that sounds deep, it is but her dazzling prose and sophisticated plotting create a novel that is quite impossible to put down.
Not for the Likes of Us
Kurt moved on his belly beneath the briars that formed a rudimentary roof for the hollowed out basin of earth the two men had called home for two nights now, slithering over the lip of the hollow and following the pull of gravity through the dark to where he knew Leo would be. The movement was that of a snake’s, but Kurt knew that he could not be a snake because a snake would have been long gone by now. He thought about what other animals he could be; a loyal mastiff at best, a fuck-witted donkey at worst.
Walk-In Emergencies Welcome
I live in minefields, study dioramas
of disaster, pose in crime scenes. I pay
attention. Last night, I overheard a woman
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin is a compact nearly four hundred page collection of Berlin’s stories, published by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.