sentence n. 1 A grammatical unit comprising a word or group of words that is separate from any other grammatical construction, and usually consists of at least one subject with its predicate and contains a finite verb or verb phrase; for example, The door is open and Go! are sentences.
On first reading this definition, I marveled at the italicized examples. These were not just sentences, I thought. The door is open. Go! They were the most beautiful sentences in the world.
In The Sentence, author Louise Erdrich plays around with the different definitions of that seemingly straightforward titular word: Starting with a bizarre crime caper, the main character, Tookie, is committed to a ridiculously long sentence of incarceration, and when a former teacher sends her reading material (including a dictionary from which the above definition is sourced), Tookie begins parsing sentences in the literary sense. Then when Tookie is eventually released and begins working in a (haunted) bookstore, she is given a diary that she believes contains a mysterious sentence that is capable of literally killing anyone who reads it.
This is a very literary book — set mostly in the bookstore, characters recommend books to customers and talk often about what makes a good book — and in one scene, the character Louise (obviously the author, who owns Birchbark Books in Minneapolis) explains that a well-written book should flow naturally, not have a feeling of having been cynically constructed. And if I had to name what caused me to not completely connect with this read it’s that it felt too natural and unconstructed: I got the sense that Erdrich started writing a book about a haunted bookstore and a cursed diary (the bits set in the bookstore start in November of 2019) but then COVID hit, and perhaps more urgently for her, George Floyd was murdered in her hometown and Minneapolis became a nightmare scene of riots and looting and police using tactical gear and tear gas against peaceful protestors; and Erdrich puts it all in this book, to the detriment of the narrative setup: A mysteriously cursed diary becomes less compelling when actual people are dying in the streets and in the COVID wards. I appreciate what Erdrich wanted to capture of the tumultuous times she was living through, but I didn’t love this novel.
“What I’m trying to say is that a certain sentence of the book — a written sentence, a very powerful sentence — killed Flora.”
Louise was silent. After a few moments she spoke. “I wish I could write a sentence like that.”
I really did enjoy the start of The Sentence — the bodysnatching was bizarre and Tookie seemed like a fascinating character that I was looking forward to spending more time with — but I didn’t understand why she kept dissociating every time things got tough; I kept feeling like I had missed important information along the way that would have explained her and what she was going through. (Did I miss an earlier novel by Erdrich that showed Tookie and Pollux’s history or the history between Flora and Tookie’s Mom? I kept waiting for more info to drop and I’m still confused about their backstories.) As a bookseller myself, I did like everything set in the business of the bookstore — the satisfaction of having a customer love a recommendation; the pressures of lockdown but still filling online and curbside orders; watching the looting on the news and wondering if their store could remain untouched — but what started as an interesting story of a haunting and a cursed book really didn’t pan out for me; just, meh, despite the gestures at exploring indigenous identity in a way that seemed promising (even the bits about the rugaroo felt only hinted at and then abandoned.) It really felt like Erdrich pivoted to include the real-life trauma she was witnessing all around her (and who can blame her for that?) and her characters got tossed around by events instead of directing them; and I felt tossed around and confused right along with them (which might have been Erdrich’s intent, but it wasn’t satisfying for me.)
There was a sentence people were chanting all over the world now. I can’t breathe. I wanted to run out the door again.
Again, with a front row seat to some of the most traumatic events of recent history, I can’t blame Erdrich for including so much on George Floyd and how Minneapolis exploded in the aftermath of his murder. With a cast of indigenous characters, it is natural for them to react along with the African-American community as fellow marginalised peoples: from the original land thefts by white settlers to the more recent history of local Natives being taken down to the river by cops for “questioning”, beatings, and being left for dead, the indigenous and African-American communities are natural allies against bad cops, and this made for an interesting perspective. It made less sense for me to have had Tookie, upon her release from prison, marry the tribal police officer who had originally arrested her and have her only now, in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, think of him as just another cop with questionable motives. For Tookie to be trying to deal with a ghost and a killing book (and a new grandchild and COVID and a confrontation with her own past) all at the same time, made little narrative sense to me: it might feel like real life, but it doesn’t feel like a novel (or maybe it felt like two different novels mashed together). I just couldn’t love this one.
