The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich

I’ve been working through Erdrich’s oeuvre for the last year or two, and she has turned into a go-to author for me.  I don’t know if any of her books can match the mastery of The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse in my eyes.   But she continually impresses me. 

The Antelope Wife follows two particular Ojibwe families, the Roys and the Shawanos.  The novel particularly plays with ideas of naming, bead-work, fidelity, parenthood, and surviving tragedy.  As usual, point of view shifts from character to character in the book’s chapters.  I was particularly pleased with the chapters written from the dog Almost Soup’s point of view.  I know that doesn’t hook everyone, but I’m a sucker for pooches and I’m not afraid to admit it. 

Coincidentally, the book opens with a fragment of a creation myth, which again appears at several points in the novel.  I was in the midst of a big study of creation myth when I plucked this one off the to-read shelf, so that aspect of the novel was  a nice surprise.   There are a few low points in the book–Erdrich occasionally lets her prose get away from her, and a few of her characters are not quite as well-realized as they could be.   But, overall, it’s a good book, and it elucidates another part of the Ojibwe community Erdrich is building for us. 

Trackback URI | Comments RSS