November 2022 Book Group
Join librarian Meredith to discuss The Sentence by Louise Erdrich!
In this New York Times bestselling novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors.
The Sentence asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader, and to the book.
A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.
The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.
“The irreverent and funny Tookie grapples with the ghost, then the pandemic, then the protests. Her journey, captured in Erdrich’s expert prose, is a cathartic and comforting story that book lovers will gobble up.” — Real Simple
“A bewitching novel…Strange, enchanting and funny: a work about motherhood, doom, regret and the magic—dark, benevolent and every shade in between—of words on paper.” — Molly Young, New York Times
"THE SENTENCE is a wonder...an utterly original, exhilarating novel...that burns with moral passion, brims with humor, and captivates with its striking and irresistible voice...A testament to the life-making importance of stories." — Priscilla Gilman, Boston Globe
"Imaginative, boldly honest....Erdrich's prose, layered with unforgettable flourishes of detail...enhances and deepens this growing sense of a larger collective haunting....The Sentence is a staggering addition to Erdrich's already impressive body of work." — BookPage
Copies of The Sentence are available to check out at the Scandinavia Public Library, or you may place a hold through Infosoup.
Book Group normally meets on the fourth Tuesday of each month from January through October. The November 2002 meeting will be on the fifth Tuesday of the month. We do not meet in December. Be sure to watch our website or our Facebook page for the most recent updates!