The round House
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When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, 14-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family. (This book was previously … More »
When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, 14-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family. (This book was previously listed in
HARPERCOLL
The Round House won the National Book Award for fiction.
One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native-American life—Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction—at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.
Baker
& Taylor
When his mother, a tribal enrollment specialist living on a reservation in North Dakota, slips into an abyss of depression after being brutally attacked, fourteen-year-old Joe Coutz sets out with his three friends to find the person that destroyed his family.
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Add a CommentLouise Erdrich, my favourite author.
A very good read. I enjoyed this book. I would recommend this book for all to read.
I love reading Ms. Erdrich's stories. The style and tension in this book are different than other stories that she has written, but this is not a criticism in any way. I will likely purchase this book since I am a slow reader and it is not currently possible to renew the book without being returned to the end of the long waitlist...
after years of being intimidated by erdrich, the round house has won me over. funny, warm, and very human.
A worthwhile read.
This is such a great book! Even better than her earlier novels, which are superb. It's heart-breaking, though, and very powerful. She deals with issues of intricate moral complexity, involving ethical systems that might be antithetical (US gov't, tribal, Catholic), that involve the characters in life-shattering decisions. And there are totally hilarious scenes too. What a tremendous storyteller!
A powerful, lyrical coming-of-age story about a 13-year old boy on a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation who tries to avenge a brutal crime committed against his mother. Erdrich develops full, complex characters and paints a nuanced picture of reservation life, capturing abundant beauty and sadness. Erdrich used to be one of my favorite literary fiction authors but after her husband Michael Dorris committed suicide in 1997 amidst allegations of physical and sexual abuse against their children (some of it possibly with Erdrich's knowledge), I wasn't able to stomach reading either author. Finally coming back to Erdrich's writing, I find it as powerful and beautiful as ever.
This book/story captivated me from the first few pages until the end!
A 13 year old native boy goes through the process of grief and anger when his mother is brutally attacked. Then the attacker gets off with a legal loophole that pushes the boy into a quest for justice. This was an interesting story that kept me engaged right till the end.
These are my excuses for not being swept off my feet yet again by an author who I have come to trust, respect and admire: 1.I have not yet read The Plague of Doves which might have mitigated what seemed to me like an overwhelming number of characters with a complex set of inter-relationships and back stories. My bad. I had no idea this was part of a series. 2. While thirteen-year-old Joe, may well be, from my experience, realistically drawn, I could find him neither "charming" nor "endearing" in any way. He is a thirteen-year-old boy in over his head and I can think of nothing less comfortable than being forced to see a tragic situation made into a disaster through the eyes of an adolescent. I shudder at what We Need to Talk about Kevin would have been like had Lionel Shriver chosen Kevin as the POV. 3. I read this novel at the perfectly wrong time: when the white backlash to Idle No More has both frightened and sickened me to point where the only sensible place for my head would have been buried in the sand rather than a book about the plight of First Nations' Peoples. Again, my bad. 4. I am audacious enough to contend that the Weetigo/ Windigo legend has more relevance (both now and in early times) to sociologists than criminologists. It is in my opinion, more an infamy of neglect and oppression than it is a justification for frontier justice or a serious examination of good and evil.