In this multigenerational tour-de-force of sin, redemption, murder, and vengeance ("Publishers Weekly"), a senseless and horrific crime in 1911 forever changes the lives of several families living in and around Pluto, North Dakota, a white town on the far western edge of an Ojibwe reservation.
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In this multigenerational tour-de-force of sin, redemption, murder, and vengeance ("Publishers Weekly"), a senseless and horrific crime in 1911 forever changes the lives of several families living in and around Pluto, North Dakota, a white town on the far western edge of an Ojibwe reservation.
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This book took me a little while to get into but once there I was hooked. Very well written and all characters were interesting and i loved the way they all came together
Ellyb
Aug 16, 2009
Tragedy is Beautiful
I think I will remember this book for a very long time as that which introduced me to Louise Erdrich, because after picking up "The Plague of Doves," I want to read her entire canon. This does not happen often. It happened when I first read Margaret Atwood, but I cannot think of any other author whose work so captivated me on the first reading.
At times hilarious, morose, disturbing, and utterly heart-breaking, "The Plague of Doves," weaves together multiple narrators who offer their own perspectives on their small town of Pluto, North Dakota, and two terrible linked crimes which occurred there shortly after the turn of the century. This is one of those novels that in its own way defies "aboutness." Yes, there is a plot, but the book is so much more than what happens in it. The honesty of her characters and the vividness of their joys and trials is so real that their passions and sorrows practically infiltrate the reader's own and it's all a person can do to stop thinking about the book and its characters when going about one's day.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. As I stated at the beginning, from here on out I will be picking up anything from Louise Erdrich that I can get my hands on.
martha
Jan 7, 2009
masterful book
I echo the above first review in all respects and can't find anything to add to the description of the novel. The tale is gripping and both artistically and technically beyond reproach. It created for me the paradox of wanting to know the denouement of each character and their story, but feeling reluctant finish. The entails some reflection on the part of the reader when Erdrich ties together the loose ends. Aside from the beauty of the book, the need to reflect contributes to its haunting qualities.
riverrun
Oct 10, 2008
Plainsong
Louise Erdrich is mapping out territory whose predecessors are Gabriel Garcia Marquez and William Faulkner. By employing multiple narrative voices, she is forging a wholly imagined world within the restricted geography of the Plains, and in doing so dramatizes the intertwined fates of her Indian and white characters. In The Plague of Doves, she weaves a masterful multigenerational tale that begins with the murder of a white family--whose infant is spirited away by a Native American character--and the hanging of three men and a boy, one of whom survives, in the practice of vigilante "rough justice." This crime from the past infects the dying present of Pluto, a settlement on the edge of the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota, as the lives of the ancestors of both victims and victimizers become helplessly braided in love, guilt, mania, and loss. This is the sort of ambitious novelistic mural of a whole community that Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison was once capable of.
