false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170619343m/63837.jpg 63837 22 Over the course of 13 years and five novels, Louise Erdrich has staked out a richly imagined corner of North Dakota soil--her own Yoknapatawpha, where every character is connected to every other and nothing can be said to happen for the first time. <I>The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse</I> is no exception. The report in question comes from Father Damien Modeste, who has served the Ojibwe through a century of famine, epidemics, murders, and feuds. But the good priest is not what he appears. The prologue ends with the curiously beautiful image of the old man slowly removing heavy robes, undergarments, and, at last, a bandage wound tightly around women's breasts: "small, withered, modest as folded flowers."<p> How--and why--could such a deception last so long? That's the first mystery. The second begins when Father Jude Miller (a name familiar to readers of <I>The Beet Queen</I>) arrives to investigate the life of Sister Leopolda (or Pauline Puyat, another familiar name). Was Leopolda a saint? Or its opposite, whatever that is? Miracles, after all, are a part of the reservation's everyday life; for every nun's stigmata there's a secular wonder like the death of Nanapush. Indeed, the chapter detailing this old trickster's demise is the kind of earthy, tragicomic fable Erdrich does to perfection, including as it does an extended trial by moose, death by flatulence, and not one but two lustful resurrections. <p> Erdrich's writing is at its best when she chronicles the bittersweet humor of reservation life. It's at its worst, sadly, when she cranks up the fog machine and goes for the violins. ("He had the odd sensation that petals drifted in the air between them, petals of a fragrant and papery citrus velvet," she tells us, telegraphing Father Jude's attraction to a woman.) But at least the book's sins are sins of ambition--this is a novelist who revisits the same territory because the capaciousness of her vision demands it. Readers may forgive Erdrich's vagueness about Father Damien's religious calling, but they will never forget her images, as lovely and surprising as figures glimpsed in a dream: the devil in the shape of a black dog, his paw in a bowl of soup; freshly planted pansies, nodding at the priests' feet "like the faces of spoiled babies"; a woman in a billowing white nightdress riding a grand piano through the "gray soup" of a flood. Moments like these are small miracles of their own. <I>--Mary Park</I> 61990 2 12 2001 The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse total:1520|5:692|4:537|3:220|2:62|1:9| 1520 6401 1963 227 2 6 false false Wed Jun 04 19:44:54 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 12 18:34:15 -0700 2009 Anna Karenina, that I would never again finish a book just because I had started it -- and I continue to live by that standard. Still, I came very near the end, and my complaint abo...more...]]> 4 2 true false Fri Feb 08 07:54:42 -0800 2008 Thu Mar 06 16:49:59 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 3 false false Fri Apr 24 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 04 03:31:22 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 24 06:04:16 -0700 2009
I have read a few of Erdrich's previous novels and I have enjoyed all of them. In every one of he...more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Dec 29 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Thu Dec 04 15:51:45 -0800 2008 Tue Sep 01 20:52:43 -0700 2009
Is this 4 stars? 5 stars? First, to get my few quabbles out of the way, which may just be my own and no rea...more...]]> 5 2 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Jan 01 17:32:53 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 09 19:30:06 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 2 false false Fri Apr 11 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Mar 14 11:01:16 -0700 2008 Fri Apr 11 22:17:46 -0700 2008
There's some great, hilarious stuff with Nanapush in this book, scenes that I'm sure I'll always remember -- a moose chase gone awry, and a series of very funny resurrections. There are also many beautiful pass...more...]]> 5 0 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Sat Dec 27 10:25:07 -0800 2008 Sat Dec 27 11:02:50 -0800 2008 magic, the culture clash of Ojibwa and Roman Catholic religions,
loss, courage, love and desire, fanaticism, history.

Little No Horse is an imaginary Ojibwa reservation where a Catholic mission has had a nunn...more...]]> 5 2 false false Wed Jun 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 29 10:35:19 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 29 10:42:05 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Mar 19 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Fri Jun 12 04:59:32 -0700 2009 Sat Jun 13 08:47:14 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Mon Oct 19 11:08:09 -0700 2009 Mon Oct 19 11:15:28 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 1 false false Mon Jul 28 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 24 11:46:10 -0700 2008 Wed Jul 30 09:29:36 -0700 2008 more...]]> 0 0 false false Sat Aug 15 07:32:55 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 15 07:34:08 -0700 2009

Dernier rapport sur les miracles à Little No Horse nous en...more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Jan 24 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 27 21:11:52 -0800 2009 Tue Jan 27 21:16:52 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Oct 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 11 00:03:37 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 16 00:30:53 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 0 false false Wed Dec 03 05:26:33 -0800 2008 Wed Dec 03 05:32:13 -0800 2008
One of the things that fascinated me was the difference ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Nov 18 22:11:29 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 18 22:29:20 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 30 04:26:01 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 09 14:47:01 -0700 2009 Louise, as in, "...but the book was not like one of Louise's."

But that tells you nothing of this book. When I...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Wed Jul 22 04:04:47 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 25 04:58:22 -0700 2009 4
The story follows Father Damien Modeste from the early 1900s when he goes to tend the Catholic flock on an Ojibwe reservation in the ...more...]]> 5 0 false false Thu Mar 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 26 16:43:39 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 26 16:46:29 -0700 2009 loved this book. It's astonishing, utterly captivating, and I thought to myself, perhaps fifty pages in, I could never have imagined this story; I could not have come up with this tale. I feel as though there are so few books in the world that are utterly new, yet for me this is one ...more...]]> 4 0 false true Mon Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Aug 28 15:43:05 -0700 2008 Thu Sep 25 14:42:35 -0700 2008 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=63837