The Mighty Red by Louise ErdrichMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Erdrich's skill as a writer is undeniable; there are passages within The Mighty Red that are so beautiful and absolutely true that it takes a reader's breath away. The text describes Hugo's longing for Kismet, engaged to another, as such: "to love with canine devotion was to live in a state of miserable exhilaration, to exist on the knife-thin edge of joy." There is some plotting; a missing husband, a stolen church fund, an ill-fated teenage marriage. Themes of our relationships to our land, exemplified by factory sugar beet farming vs personal gardening, come back again and again. The problem with this literary approach is that the text at times feels too unhurried and tends to lose its momentum. Fans of Erdrich and readers of lit-fic will certainly enjoy, but slow pacing and scant capital-p "Plotting" may turn off others.
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