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Shadow Tag

3.29 of 5 stars 3.29 · rating details · 3,553 ratings · 974 reviews

"Here is the most telling fact: you wish to possess me.

Here is another fact: I loved you and let you think you could."

When Irene America discovers that her husband, Gil, has been reading her diary, she begins a secret Blue Notebook, stashed securely in a safe-deposit box. There she records the truth about her life and her marriage, while turning her Red Diary--hidden where...more

Hardcover, 272 pages

Published February 2nd 2010 by Harper (first published 2010)

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26th out of 100 books — 558 voters

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Native American Fiction

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Mar 06, 2011 Barbara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Louise Erdrich has penned a disturbing tale of a floundering marriage. Gil, an artist and Irene, his wife, who has posed for his acclaimed paintings for many years, are in the midst of searing, injurious game playing. Irene has long suspected that Gil is reading her diaries. She writes manipulative fantasies and invented facts in one , which she knows he will see and stores her true journals in a safety deposit box. They are parents to three bright, confused children, who sometimes exist in a wo...more

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May 20, 2012 Will Byrnes rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Will by: Claire B.

Shadow Tag is, we hear tell, a novelization of the demise of Erdrich’s marriage. It is an insightful, beautifully written portrait in which the character of the marriage, Dorian-Gray-like, is revealed to be somewhat wanting. Gil and Irene are the unhappy couple.

Gil has made a successful career painting his wife. We see in what we are told about his paintings the changes in their marriage.

Irene America had been the subject of his paintings in all of her incarnations—thin and virginal, a girl, t

...more Shadow Tag is, we hear tell, a novelization of the demise of Erdrich’s marriage. It is an insightful, beautifully written portrait in which the character of the marriage, Dorian-Gray-like, is revealed to be somewhat wanting. Gil and Irene are the unhappy couple.

Gil has made a successful career painting his wife. We see in what we are told about his paintings the changes in their marriage.

Irene America had been the subject of his paintings in all of her incarnations—thin and virginal, a girl, then womanly, pregnant, naked, demurely posed or frankly pornographic…but now he was losing confidence and control. His paintings were hiding from him because Irene was hiding from him. He could see it in the opacity of her eyes, the insolence of her flesh, the impatient weariness of her body when she let down her guard.

We see in the images he paints the changes in how she feels. He may deny what he is seeing, but the paint does not lie. Irene sees her artistic relationship with Gil as her being food for him to consume.

Irene is an art historian and is researching a work on George Catlin, so there is plenty of interplay between her topical musings and the reality of herself as a literal work of art. She talks about how Catlin had added an element in his paintings, new to most, the shadow. Many of the locals were concerned that their souls were being taken by these paintings, as Irene wonders if she is losing a piece of herself with each of Gil’s paintings. Contemplating Catlin’s work,

Because of the shadows, his paintings had the direct force and power of the supernatural, the dream replica, the doppelganger. It was as if a sudden twin had been created right before the subject. A twin that seemed to live and breathe and follow one with its eyes and yet was motionless. The paintings were objects of veneration and of fear. Some swore uneasily that those who allowed their portraits to be painted, eyes open, would not lie peacefully after death, as some aspect of their being would live on, staring out at the world. Others, disturbed that Catlin painted buffalo and took them away with them in his portfolio, tied his actions to the increasing scarcity of the herds upon which their lives depended. So it was, the images stole their subjects and, for the rest of the world, became more real, until it seemed they were the only things left.

They are both Native American, less than 100%, but enough to count. Erdrich always brings to her tales her experience as a Native American, offering those of us who are not of that group a look into Native culture and issues. Still, a bad marriage is a bad marriage, and Erdrich offers rich detail describing what a failed union looks like, the games each partner plays, the lies each partner tells, the roles of the children in the usually silent battle, and how their familiarity binds them.

they reverted to one of their endless arguments, first about the noodles, then about kitsch. This was not fighting, but the sort of argument that could go on for years and years, where each found bits of evidence to prove their point and dropped it into the next go-round a month, two or three months, on. They were back in old territory. They argued sometimes for comfort.

If GR readers are typical of the population at large, it is likely that about half of us have known the joys of a marital demise. I know I have. Erdrich’s scenes from a marriage rang very true in many instances, and you know early on in the story that the marriage is in serious danger.

For years, he thought, he had been mourning a death without knowing exactly who had died or how it had come about.

The story alternates between third-person depiction of the relationship between Irene and Gil, and Irene’s entries into her two diaries. One she keeps for herself, the other she uses as a weapon against Gil. She knows he sneaks looks at it, and she plants lies there to torment him.

They have three children, which adds battleground material between the pair. And a description of how one of the children keeps a memory log sounds very much like something from the author’s personal history.

Erdrich fills her novels with imagery and power. One in particular was a visualization of a wall between the two that contained its own DMZ. Another was looking down into frozen lake water

I wish we’d see a fish or turtle or something more down there, said Riel. [Gil and Irene’s daughter] And it did seem almost anything might swim into view. But there was only an amber leaf, a frayed heart suspended at the edge of a vertical white crack that went down so far it disappeared.

Despite the disappointment, the anger, the cruelty, the dishonesty, these people are very, very bonded. Can they survive without each other? Erdrich offers a shocking twist at the end, but the primary benefit is in the journey through the shadows of this marriage, and the light of Erdrich’s artistic mastery.

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Mar 03, 2012 Deborah Edwards rated it 3 of 5 stars

When an author names a character “Irene America,” chances are the name has not been randomly chosen. Irene is a a woman, but she is also a symbol – for a country, a culture, a part of history. And when that character is also Native American, her symbolic impact becomes even more nuanced. And when that character’s husband is a famous artist whose paintings are all inspired by Irene’s image, then suddenly the conceptual framework intensifies and individual interpretation of Irene - of her image, o...more When an author names a character “Irene America,” chances are the name has not been randomly chosen. Irene is a a woman, but she is also a symbol – for a country, a culture, a part of history. And when that character is also Native American, her symbolic impact becomes even more nuanced. And when that character’s husband is a famous artist whose paintings are all inspired by Irene’s image, then suddenly the conceptual framework intensifies and individual interpretation of Irene - of her image, of the real woman behind the image, of her artist husband, and of America itself - becomes not only the key to our understanding of the character, but of the story as a whole.

Irene America regularly writes her thoughts and life story in a hidden red diary. Upon discovering that her husband has found her diary and begun reading it in secret, rather than confront him, she decides to continue writing in her diary, but writing lies and half-truths and quizzical thoughts that will make her husband question their marital history and their life together. Additionally, she obtains a secret safety deposit box, and begins writing a blue diary to be kept and updated there, filled with her actual story, the truth of the matter as she believes it to be. Her husband, a possessive and occasionally abusive man, a brilliant artist, but desperate and insecure, becomes haunted and enraged by the deceptive passages he reads in the red diary, and Irene uses the betrayal as a sort of belated revenge against the man who has exploited her for all these years. It is a twisted scenario, particularly when viewed in the context of a dysfunctional marriage in which three children also get to witness their parents’ issues, and equally disturbing when utilized as a reflection of America and the revisionist history that has become an inherent part of both its mystique and its corruption.

The theme of revisionist history is woven into the story in several different ways. Irene is completing a doctoral thesis on George Catlin, an artist whose early paintings of Native Americans became controversial symbols of exploitation to some, valuable depictions of early life to others, and were a source of both fear and wonder for the subjects of those paintings. Irene tells stories about Catlin to her husband, and often those stories are filled with half-truths, imagining occurrences that never actually happened. We are given glimpses of Catlin's character that we need to reassess when we later discover Irene’s falsifications. We are left to decide if our feelings about the actual man have changed given the information we now have at our disposal, some of it true, some of it created. Catlin comes to stand for the history of America as a country and the way much of what we learn in history classes is myth, a history written by the victors, legends passed down through centuries that may have little or no basis in fact but become true by numerous retellings. Similarly, like visitors to a gallery, we are given small glimpses into the lives of our main characters, scenes that show both their weaknesses and strengths, their moments of light and dark, and then we must ask ourselves if the information at hand gives us a complete enough portrait to make an assessment about their true selves.

The fine line (or at times, vast chasm) between truth and mythology, art and reality, depiction and exploitation, image and distortion, are all images Erdrich plays with throughout the novel, often with startling and disturbing results. The material is ambitious, but Erdrich handles it deftly with sharp prose and surprising imagery. When Irene discusses the way Catlin’s portrait subjects were worried that their images on canvas contained trapped pieces of their souls, she begins to see her own image, captured so often on canvas by her artist husband (Gil), as another soul trapped in captivity, a distortion of the real woman, now altered to suit the motives of the painter and the interpretations of those who view her. Irene’s ancestors, like Catlin’s subjects, believed a soul could be captured through a shadow, a mirror, a reflection. Irene begins to see herself in Gil’s paintings as a double that has been released into the world, one that her husband now owns. Erdrich writes, “Gil had placed his foot on Irene’s shadow when he painted her. And though she tried to pull away, it was impossible to tug that skein of darkness from under his heel.”

There are other thought-provoking points made in the novel, particularly when we are made privy to Gil’s favorite artists (Rembrandt, Bonnard – both renowned for their portraiture) and asked to consider Rembrandt’s portrait of Lucretia (the doomed faithful wife who took her life rather than bear the shame of having been raped). Gil obsesses over this portrait of a woman who has been represented in art and literature throughout the ages. We know this obsession foreshadows something unfortunate for Irene and Gil, as well, but in essence, we are being asked ahead of time to judge the depiction and decide if the story has been told accurately or if it is a fabrication that has achieved nearly mythological status. Likewise, in descriptions of Bonnard's paintings, we are given small scenes from a life and asked if we can judge the truth from those few small moments in time. This theme resonates in the larger story as we are given a series of incidents, a spate of domestic moments, a handful of facts, and then are asked to discern, by virtue of just these details, if we can ever truly know the motives of the people involved in these scenes. Erdrich seems to want us to arrive at the conclusion that we all have shades of light and dark within us, we all carry the full spectrum of colors, and most of us have reflected all of them at one time or another. No single glimpse, no moment in time, ever tells the whole story. Every soul is open to interpretation.

I would have loved to have given this book four, or even five, stars. I have been pondering its stunning themes for days, and I am enamored of Erdrich’s writing style and her bravery in taking on such a breadth of philosophical matter. Unfortunately, the book itself isn’t fleshed out enough to take on such expansive themes. For starters, it is simply too short. Usually, I am apt to complain if a book is unnecessarily too long, but this book needed at least another two hundred pages to fulfill its early promise. By the end of Part Two, at just over two hundred pages, it was clear that Erdrich was rushing her narrative. Either the book had become too harrowing for her, its subject matter too difficult to explore any longer, or she was merely under a deadline and needed to wrap it up. Several veins of rich material needed to be further mined, and the impact of certain story lines was vastly diminished by the quick wrap-up. I almost want to call “Shadow Tag” Erdrich’s "unfinished" novel, because if only it were twice as long, it might be the best book ever written.

(Three and a half stars – and well worth reading for the conceptual framework alone.)
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Jan 06, 2012 Scott rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

Irene America wants out of her marriage. Her husband Gil has gained fame for his striking portraits of her. He has painted her nursing, menstruating, and victimized. He has stepped on her shadow, and her soul is bleeding as a result.

Gil is a man possessed by his wife's beauty. He loves her, oh how he loves her. He proves this by being abusive to her and their children. They try therapy, but neither of them take it seriously. She wishes she could just leave and take the children but there are co...more Irene America wants out of her marriage. Her husband Gil has gained fame for his striking portraits of her. He has painted her nursing, menstruating, and victimized. He has stepped on her shadow, and her soul is bleeding as a result.

Gil is a man possessed by his wife's beauty. He loves her, oh how he loves her. He proves this by being abusive to her and their children. They try therapy, but neither of them take it seriously. She wishes she could just leave and take the children but there are complications. Gil is the breadwinner. Otherwise Irene could leave with the comfort that she is capable of caring for their three gifted children: 14-year-old Florian is a physics genius and resident cool guy, whose interests include fractals and rock and roll. 11-year-old Riel is the survivalist. She is obsessed with surviving an apocalyptic event or the collapse of her parents'marriage, whichever comes first. 6-year-old Stoney is already showing flashes of artistic brilliance when he’s not hiding behind his entourage of stuffed animals.

But since she has failed at writing her thesis on 19th century painter George Catlin, who, somewhat like her husband, uses Native American culture as his subject, Irene’s attempt at becoming a self-sufficient academic is in limbo. She submerges herself in a sea of alcohol, but the sun of her children’s faces shine through the surface, prompting her do so something, anything to gain some control. This “something” turns out to be the manipulation of her husband through a craftily deceptive diary. After becoming certain that Gil is reading her musings, she changes the content of her red diary to pierce him with lies and half-truths, meanwhile recording her true feelings in a blue notebook that she keeps in a safe deposit box at a local bank. Since Gil believes that Irene is unaware that he is intruding on her privacy, Gil believes the red diary to be the Gospel. This false communication between the two serves to unhinge Gil and make an already unstable relationship less so.

Shadow Tag is a novel that contemplates privacy, love, security, communication, loyalty, obsession, sanity, and truth in all of their incarnations. Which version are you going to believe?(less)

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Feb 20, 2010 Scarlet rated it 4 of 5 stars

I like Louise Erdrich's books but I generally don't actively like her characters, I just sort of tolerate them. The one time I did like her protagonist, there was something about the plot that didn't grab me and I never got past the first chapter or two.

This time, I am both intrigued by the characters and wholly drawn into the premise. This should be a great read. Wondering a little bit, too, if it's related at all to the breakup of her marriage to Michael Dorris.

***

Now that I've finished, I can...more

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Feb 28, 2010 Marty rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010, harpercollins

I thought that this was a great concept. A woman (Irene) discovers that her husband (Gil) is reading her diary - the red diary - so she writes things in that diary to manipulate him. At the same time, she opens up a safe deposit box at the bank where she writes in her blue diary. The plot was really compelling, and I had a hard time putting it down.

I wonder if the book wouldn't have been better if Erdich had stuck to this concept in terms of telling the story, though. The narration really only t...more

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Oct 06, 2011 Kelly rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: cried-like-a-baby, depressing, fiction, lit, love, moving, favorites

"Love sees sharply, Hatred sees even more sharp, but Jealousy sees the sharpest for it is love and hate at the same time"
-Arab Proverb

I have to admit, I am both terrified and enamored with the characters in this story. Though it would be so easy to simply call them repugnant and their actions ugly, detaching myself from the story and pushing their outcomes into "That could never happen to me" land, would only tempt me down the road they traveled. Brutal and twisted though they may be, there's al...more

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Oct 24, 2011 Judy Croome rated it 4 of 5 stars

Erdrich is, without a doubt, a magical writer. She weaves words into images and emotions as exquisitely as her Native-American ancestors wove colourful tales into their blankets.

Unfortunately, ‘Shadow Tag’ has a dark edge to it that’s not to my taste. When I think of ‘The Painted Drum’, ‘The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No-Horse’ or ‘The Master Butcher’s Singing Club’, I remember stories that wrung my emotions but left me with a sense of hope; a sliver of illumination that highlighted...more

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Feb 09, 2011 Mrs. Bowers rated it 2 of 5 stars

The idea of two separate diaries is great, but Erdrich simply fails to pull this off successfully. The diary device -- which is what drew me to this novel in the first place -- is, actually, barely used. I had hoped she would really dive into the potential juiciness of this, but nope.

Initially, I found her style to be appalling; the text is riddled with short, choppy sentences and long, rambling run-ons. This is clearly a stylistic CHOICE rather than a mistake, but it felt as if I was reading a...more

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Nov 25, 2012 Andy Miller rated it 3 of 5 stars

spoiler alert, I discuss part of the ending.
I suppose the book was well written and built on an interesting premise, the wife in a marriage keeps two sets of diaries, one of which she knows her husband reads. She uses the first set to taunt and manipulate her husband in this war of a marriage which includes family violence, alcoholism, and devastating impacts of the three young children.
My problem with the book is that I hated reading the second half of it, especially the parts that showed the e...more

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Mar 18, 2010 Natasha rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult-fiction

She's done it again. I can't even write about the ineffable beauty of Erdrich's work.

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May 16, 2013 Rona Simmons rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was not a book that appealed to me, for the most part I suppose because I did not like the two primary characters. I saw from the quotes on the cover the author writes frequently of native Americans – in which I have considerable interest, but this book just did not work for me. The protagonist, Irene America, is a basket case (in one revealing sentence, she says “My mind is a toy basket filled with tiny, cheap, broken stuff.” Irene is determined to find the courage to leave her husband Gil...more

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Apr 02, 2013 Michelle Lancaster rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-ve-reviewed

By Louise Erdrich
Harper Perennial 272 pgs
978-0061536106
Rating: 4

This book is excruciating. Also spellbinding. You will be appalled by the mind games being played but you will also come to understand them. At first you won't believe that you would ever play these games. But then you will begin to reflect and wonder if you haven't played some of these games yourself. I enjoyed this book greatly. It is a pleasure to read. Just be forewarned.

Irene and Gil are married and have 3 children. Gil is a su...more By Louise Erdrich
Harper Perennial 272 pgs
978-0061536106
Rating: 4

This book is excruciating. Also spellbinding. You will be appalled by the mind games being played but you will also come to understand them. At first you won't believe that you would ever play these games. But then you will begin to reflect and wonder if you haven't played some of these games yourself. I enjoyed this book greatly. It is a pleasure to read. Just be forewarned.

Irene and Gil are married and have 3 children. Gil is a successful artist and Irene is supposed to be working on her thesis. Irene has been keeping a journal since their first child was born. There are many of these red bound journals. She has recently discovered that Gil is reading her journal so she has bought another journal, a blue one, and it is the real journal. She has gone so far as to rent a safe deposit box for this blue journal. So far so good but Irene keeps writing in the red journal. She is writing for Gil.

Gil is an almost completely unsympathetic character. He never exhibits any kindness that is not corrupted by self. He so desperately needs to keep this family of his together that he is moved to ever more inspired heights of cruelty. The majority of Gil's work are portraits of Irene in many poses, all graphic images of different stages of body and life. His portraits are an attempt to maintain control over Irene. Almost as if the old Native American belief that a picture takes some of your soul is true. Gil takes pieces of Irene's soul.

Irene seems a much more sympathetic character. But then you realize that you may have made a mistake. There are deep, very dark currents at work in this marriage. Irene begins to resent the portraits Gil has painted of her over the years. She begins to feel those pieces of her soul as they go missing. In big ragged chunks. So since Irene has discovered Gil's disrespect and invasion of her privacy she begins writing fiction for Gil to read.

This is how the plot spins out of control for everyone. As Gil and Irene each struggle for control of the other they take no prisoners. Shadow Tag is sort of a thriller and the tension builds and builds. The twist at the end shocks. And then again it doesn't. You saw this coming even if you didn't. And it tells you all you needed to know about Gil and Irene.

Please visit Louise Erdrich's book store: http://birchbarkbooks.com

*Note that many people believe this book has autobiographical elements. You can take a look at this short bio of Ms. Erdrich's former husband Michael Dorris and make up your own mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_...
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Oct 17, 2012 Courtney Johnston rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, fiction

Reading Louise Erdrich is like having your heart ripped out and stomped all over, but still understanding why someone did that to you - and forgiving them without even trying it.

'Shadow Tag' is a portrait - the metaphor is very apt - of a desperately, violently, drunkenly, obscenely, passionately, disdainfully, exhaustedly unhappy marriage. Gil and Irene feed off each other, wound each other, manipulate and heal each other, all before a chorus of witnesses: 14 year-old Florian, eleven year-old R...more Reading Louise Erdrich is like having your heart ripped out and stomped all over, but still understanding why someone did that to you - and forgiving them without even trying it.

'Shadow Tag' is a portrait - the metaphor is very apt - of a desperately, violently, drunkenly, obscenely, passionately, disdainfully, exhaustedly unhappy marriage. Gil and Irene feed off each other, wound each other, manipulate and heal each other, all before a chorus of witnesses: 14 year-old Florian, eleven year-old Riel and six-year old Stoney.

The day after I put down 'Shadow Tag', I picked up Craig Arnold's 'Made Flesh'. The collection opens with a long poem, 'Couple from Hell', a story of love and hate and distance and bewilderment, told through Hades and Persephone. It is very, very beautiful and very, very hard to read, and contains the following lines:

Two people on a bed trying to make love
your hands won't hold each other you turn away
to separate sleep only to startle yourselves awake
in the thick of coupling arms and mouths
full of each other some unspeakable desire
grinds you against each other like continental plates
at the earth's foundation but waking once again
you pull apart to opposite corners of the heart
and what you don't say is a dance floor between you

Soft as ivy pulling brick to pieces
she puts down roots in you you fear
her hold on you is all that keeps you whole
and fear leads to shame and shame to anger
and anger to bitterness she must own
what she has broken you will hold her
hostage to your unhappiness

The poem hews close to the tone of 'Shadow Tag', and it feels appropriate to respond to one through the other, because I read Erdrich first as a poet. As a result, I cared less about the narrative (which is tight and fast in some places and slow and lingering in others) and paid more attention to Erdrich's words and, particularly, the set pieces that involved each of the children: small, innocent Stoney; lithe, knowing Florian; deep, defensive Riel. This passage - oh, this passage:

What is it? What is it?
The crying began all over again with the same miserable fore. Then Stoney quit.
I don't want to be a human, he said. His voice was passionate. I want to be a snake. I want to be a rat or spider or wolf. Maybe a cheetah.
Why? What's wrong?
It's too hard to be human. I wish I was born a crow or a raccoon. I could be a horse. I don't want to be human any more.
After he considered many other animals, Stoney told his mother what had happened. That afternoon, at school, Stoney had made fun of another child. The teacher had first sharply reprimanded him, then told him the other child was handicapped, which Stoney hadn't understood.
You made a mistake, said Irene, it's all right. You didn't mean it. Did you say you were sorry?
Yes, yes, said Stoney, crying again. His rosy face was deeply flushed. His eyelashes clumped in wet points. The skin around his eyes was puffed and tinged a delicate lavender. His sorrow entered Irene and loosened her arms and made her eyes sting. She tried to hold him, but he wrenched away, and said, I don't blame you if you don't want me. I should be taken away.
Irene put her arms out again and this time Stoney flung himself upon her heart. As she held him, her thoughts spun; it took a long time for her to coax Stoney into a different frame of mind. Later on, she remembered that each of her children at the age of six were thoughtful, said startling things, and had experienced shame. Sometimes the humiliations were public, sometimes it happened at home. But the first time it occurred shame always pierced deep. The feeling was new, fresh, and terrible. It made you want to crawl out of your skin. Irene had almost forgotten what the feeling was like.

There is a certain staginess to the novel - of tell, don't show:

Winnie Jane had lived to raise Irene and see her grandchildren - that was something. Not enough, but something. Irene had grown up in the middle of Minneapolis without a television. Her mother had dragged her to everything Ojibwe. She learned the histories of the reservations before she learned the Pledge of Allegiance. Winnie Jane also loved recordings of Shakespeare's history plays, and Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear. None of the comedies, of course. They were Indians.
Gil had grown up watching the TV set his mother had brought home from the church basement. He could quote plots and lines form The Brady Bunch, The Courtship of Eddie's Father, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, and I Love Lucy. Each episode was full of snappy comebacks, laugh tracks, an ooh-aah ending. Her endings were of course insane bloodbaths. His outlook was sentimental while hers was tragic. The union of the tragic and sentimental is kitsch. Irene felt that whenever she opened her mouth the appreciate her marriage in public, she was giving tongue to kitsch.

Towards the end of the book, Gil ponders a quote from a story by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It isn't given to us to know those rare moments when people are wide open and the lightest touch can wither or heal. A moment too late and we can never reach them any more in this world. They will not be cured by our most efficacious drugs or slain with our sharpest swords. 'Shadow Tag' catches, unflinchingly, of how the power of emotion first expressed as love can leach away or - more frighteningly - transmogrify into other, harder, weapons. It is a book that is denies redemption - and is all the more powerful for it.
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May 09, 2012 Carl Brush rated it 3 of 5 stars

When I read that Louise Erdrich had published a new book and that it was super, I nearly fell on my knees in thanks. She’s given me so much reading pleasure over the years that it seems greedy to ask for more, but I guess greedy is what I am. So anxious was I to get into Shadow Tag that I was ready to buy the hardback. Getting too old to wait. But my buddy beat me to it, so the copy I read was his.

I wish I could join in the elation of the reviewer, who found that she simultaneously couldn’t wai...more

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Feb 29, 2012 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Overall, I feel torn about this book. I had to read it for my Literary Analysis class. On the one hand, I really enjoyed Erdrich's writing style, she gives a lovely haunting atmosphere to her writing. The voices of the woman, Irene, as well as the omniscient narrator are lovely and bittersweet. On the opposite side there were some things that deeply disturbed me about this book. The physical and psychological torture that Gil and Irene put each other as well as their own children through was chi...more

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Feb 29, 2012 Bonnie Brody rated it 4 of 5 stars

Irene America and her husband Gil live in Minneapolis with their three children. Florian is the oldest and is a genious. Riel, the middle child is trying to hold the family together. Stoney is the child they had to try and save their marriage when it was too late. Gil is a rather famous artist whose main subject is Irene. He paints her in every human condition: admiration, aspects of humiliation and in sexual poses. Irene is working on her doctorate without making much progress.

When the book ope...more Irene America and her husband Gil live in Minneapolis with their three children. Florian is the oldest and is a genious. Riel, the middle child is trying to hold the family together. Stoney is the child they had to try and save their marriage when it was too late. Gil is a rather famous artist whose main subject is Irene. He paints her in every human condition: admiration, aspects of humiliation and in sexual poses. Irene is working on her doctorate without making much progress.

When the book opens, Gil and Irene's marriage is in deep trouble. She wants him to leave but can't seem to get him out of the house. She tries a ploy to get him worked up enough to leave. She knows that he is reading her journals and so she writes things in her journal that are untrue and are a betrayal to their marriage and intimacy. She also keeps a 'real' journal in her safety deposit box where she writes the truth.
This journal is out of Gil's reach.

Both Gil and Irene have serious drinking problems which contribute to the dysfunctional dynamics of their marriage. Additionally, Gil has an anger problem that he takes out on Irene and the children, often being abusive. As with most abusive couples, they are fairly isolated from others though Irene has one friend, Louise.

There are strong American Indian themes in this book. The title 'Shadow Tag' relates to indian mythology where one can lose their sense of self if someone steps on their shadow. Gil has stepped on Irene's and she feels lost and dependent on him. "Because of the shadows, his paintings had the direct force and power of the supernatural, the dream replica, the doppelganger. It was as if a sudden twin had been created right before the subject". Irene struggles through much of this book to try and find herself. Unfortunately, her inability to leave Gil and her extreme drinking get in the way.

I enjoyed the novel quite a bit and there were some nice surprises along the way. Some of the plot's unveiling was a little too pat but other parts of the book were beautifully written and a joy to read.
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Jan 29, 2012 Jenny O. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Erdich is one of the most well known and critically acclaimed Native American authors today. Her recent book, Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In the 80s and 90s, she was married to Michael Dorris, also an acclaimed Native American author. They collaborated on many of their works and were celebrated as the quintessential artistic couple. In the late nineties, Dorris was accused of abusing their adopted children, and in the midst of a divorce, he committed suicide. Erdich ha...more Erdich is one of the most well known and critically acclaimed Native American authors today. Her recent book, Plague of Doves was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In the 80s and 90s, she was married to Michael Dorris, also an acclaimed Native American author. They collaborated on many of their works and were celebrated as the quintessential artistic couple. In the late nineties, Dorris was accused of abusing their adopted children, and in the midst of a divorce, he committed suicide. Erdich has never publicly spoken about these events (as I"m sure none of us would.) Theories, however, abound.

In Shadow Tag, it would be ludicrous for someone to read it as truth. It would also be insane to think she didn't use any of her real life experiences, either.

It's a soul wrenching book, for sure. Irene America is married to the man who paints "iconic" pictures of her. She is used as a symbol of the subjugation of a people. She is shown in multiple poses, being raped, being tortured, etc. In turn, she has been exploited by her creator. Nothing is hers only. Not even her thoughts. When her husband begins to read her diary, robbing her of any vestige of individuality, she avenges herself by purposely having two diaries: one for the truth, and one filled with lies to drive her husband crazy. Caught in the whirlwind of deception and a terribly twisted relationship, are the children, who are pinned between an alcoholic mother and an abusive father. Irene, however, cannot escape the hold he has on her. She stays out of fear, but also an all-consuming misplaced responsibility for his mental wellbeing. It's the classic codependent relationship. That they are survivors of a dying world is also another binding force. Erdich draws a startingly full color depiction of both of these flawed people: each is both victim and perpetrator, each is both sadist and masochist.

Erdich is a master of knowing what to say, and what to leave out. But this novel isn't for everyone; there are scenes in here that will break you in two.

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Jan 01, 2012 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars

What would you do if you caught someone reading your diary? If you caught your spouse snooping in your inner-most thoughts, how angry would you be? In Louise Erdrich’s Shadow Tag, Irene America is a woman in an abusive marriage, who discovers that her husband has been reading her diary. Instead of lashing out, she takes advantage — she starts a secret journal and uses her diary to manipulate her violent husband, Gil.

Gil is an artist and Irene is his muse. His iconic paintings of his wife have br...more What would you do if you caught someone reading your diary? If you caught your spouse snooping in your inner-most thoughts, how angry would you be? In Louise Erdrich’s Shadow Tag, Irene America is a woman in an abusive marriage, who discovers that her husband has been reading her diary. Instead of lashing out, she takes advantage — she starts a secret journal and uses her diary to manipulate her violent husband, Gil.

Gil is an artist and Irene is his muse. His iconic paintings of his wife have brought him tremendous success, but they have also pigeonholed him as a Native American artist:

“Don’t paint Indians. The subject wins. You’ll never be an artist. You’ll be an American Indian artist…Still, Gil had no choice. He painted Indians when he painted his wife because he couldn’t help it — the ferocity between them, the need. Her blood ancestors came out in Gil’s paint as he worked.”

There is certainly ferocity between them. There is evidence of great passion, but it is passion that has turned sour and gone wrong. Irene has fallen out of love with Gil and I am never really certain whether Gil adores Irene or despises her. He goes out of his way to antagonize her, buying her expensive gifts she doesn’t want and throwing parties that she will hate. He ridicules her in person and on canvas — he paints her nude, in demeaning positions — but she continues to model for him. They are locked in a sort of mortal combat; they hurt each other terribly but they just can’t break away.

“Here is the most telling fact: you wish to possess me. Here is another fact: I loved you and let you think you could.”

I love the way that story is both subtle and jarring. There are hints of violence and unhappiness, then there is a sudden slap. Gil dotes on his children, praising their unique qualities, then he slams his son’s forehead into the table. The family orbits around Gil, pandering to his mercurial moods — especially the children — knowing when to pull away, when to hide. Even the dogs are sensitive to it, milling around and putting themselves physically between Gil and the children. The children seem too wise, too knowing, and then Erdrich sneaks up on you with something shocking.

The story shifts around – the red diary that Gil sneaks downstairs to read. The blue notebook, safely under lock and key. Gil’s fevered attempts to win back Irene’s love. The children, hiding in their rooms. Irene’s dreams of escape. She uses the diary she knows he reads to test and manipulate her husband, with occasionally startling results.

There are several interesting themes in the book – I kept thinking that this is one I would love to introduce to a reading group. There is the way that Gil and Irene’s Native American heritage influences their thinking and their relationship. The complex relationship between artist and model, the way that Gil has painted Irene in both beautiful and terrible ways, and the way Irene holds his career and his inspiration in the palm of her hand. There is the question of a mother’s duty to protect her children:

“Florian gave Irene a false smile. Don’t cry. He changed his voice to an insinuating whine. You’ll be okay. We’ll just put a little ice on that bruise.”

Irene is not painted as a saint here. She takes her share of swings, even if they aren’t physical. She lies to her husband in that little red book, hoping to get a reaction, hoping to make him leave. Her flaws make her an interesting character.

The ending was a shock. Occasionally, you think you see where a book is going. You’ve got an idea how the story will end and then…it doesn’t. It takes a path you never expected. In hindsight, it made perfect sense, but I was still jolted in my chair as we hurtled toward the end.

Shadow Tag is a compelling read with flawed but sympathetic characters, an interesting premise and an excellent, gradual reveal. (less)

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Aug 08, 2011 SwensonBooks rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: jill

There is a red diary hidden in plain sight. Irene continues to write in it even after she realizes Gil is secretly reading it. She writes, but she writes lies to entrap him. Irene keeps her own personal journal at the bank in a safe deposit box. She locks away her innermost truths. The father of her three children begins to doubt his paternity because of what he has read in her red diary. The gaps and fissures created between Irene's red diary and her blue book at the bank reveal how small breac...more There is a red diary hidden in plain sight. Irene continues to write in it even after she realizes Gil is secretly reading it. She writes, but she writes lies to entrap him. Irene keeps her own personal journal at the bank in a safe deposit box. She locks away her innermost truths. The father of her three children begins to doubt his paternity because of what he has read in her red diary. The gaps and fissures created between Irene's red diary and her blue book at the bank reveal how small breaches of trust and invasions of privacy between a man and wife is a game of shadow tag.

Erdrich tells the story of a man and a woman who have three children; each character so familiar to me they feel like home and I'd know them if I bumped into them at the grocery. After 20 years of reading her books peopled with folks from Minnesota with or without Indian blood, these people are familiar and their real stories are tragic. One of the things I love about Erdrich's writing is that she makes the dilution of Indian blood the subtext of her quintessentially American stories. The mixed heritage of characters is laid lightly in descriptive details and plot advancement, particularly in the voices of Irene and Gil's children.

She has the gift of telling her stories with each character speaking as narrator by chapter. Each telling of the story in its turn is her exquisite style of writing. And in this new title, Erdrich adds another layer or two of complexity in the tale-ing with diaries and journals and this novel, making the genre a trope for what is real. Its meaning and the truth reside in the reader of the varying narrative accounts.

Since Love Medicine, her first novel, I've been an avid reader of Erdrich's books. The Beet Queen and Tracks, her second and third novels, proved equally compelling. She does not require her readers to have read her previous work, though certainly if a reader has done so the reading proves richer. Four Souls had an excerpt in the New Yorker that had me ordering the book rush order. This is her thirteenth novel. She's also published a collection of short stories, three books of poetry, five children's titles, and two non-fiction books. Erdrich can write.

She can speak, too. I've heard her give a reading (Athens, Georgia, late 1980s). Louise is not someone I know personally but she's the kind of person I would like to know. Having followed her career, I do know she has loved and lost her husband, Michael Dorris; for many years they were quite the celebrity couple in academic and writing circles. Life has not been so easy for her but the writing has been good. As a reader I am grateful to her for solving deep spiritual generational family puzzles. Sometimes the puzzles are my own and sometimes they are of someone close to me just at the moment I needed to `get it'.

If you've never read anything by Louise Erdrich before now, this is a perfect novel to indulge yourself in for the pure pleasure in the craft of writing. You don't need to know a thing about her or her previous novels. It stands entirely on its own as a work of genius.

The premise of love undermined by distrust makes it a quick read. I could not put it down. What happens between a man and a woman when the day to day rages of passion become everyday? And what if that mundane experience is wild passionate love? Irene and Gil are in love and madness descends when the years roll on and Irene is still the primary subject of all his paintings. Her image is what he sells. He wants others to consume her, too. To be an object of sexual arousal day in and day out for his pleasure and business takes its toll. I won't reveal the tragic ending; you never see it coming.

The beginning begs you to enter: "I have two diaries now...You gave me the first book in order to record my beginning year as a mother. It was very sweet of you. ...After quite a lot of searching, I expect, you have found my red diary. You have been reading it in order to discover whether I am deceiving you." Gil suspects Irene may be having an affair with one of his friends. Irene wants to be left alone, in privacy; she seeks solitude desperately. Going to the bank and sitting in the tiny cubicle day after day to write in her blue notebook, it is where she confesses to her husband her deception. So begins the twisted tale. Page one: "The second diary, what you might call my real diary, is the one I am writing in now." Here begins a soul searing look at the depths of love and its darkest pools.

Put the book on a gift list for yourself. Or check it out at the library. I got mine through Book of the Month Club. Believe it or not I've been a member since the 1980s; I think I got my copy of Louise Erdrich's The Bingo Palace free on bonus points. If you like Shadow Tag, you might like Louise Erdrich's other books. I've learned a lot about good writing from studying her techniques. She's a most remarkable writer.(less)

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Aug 08, 2011 Morrigan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010-read

This book is about a crumbling marriage, the destructive games they play and the impact of their interaction and destructiveness has on their children. Irene and Gil face the end of the marriage. Irene wants Gil to just leave and Gil refuses to let go.

Irene discovers that Gil has been reading her diary and starts planting false information in it. The kids show the obvious damage of their parent's relationship and abusive behavior. Gil is sometimes physically abusive and then later seeks to win...more

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Jun 29, 2011 Pia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Oh man, oh man. I cried at the end of this book, not only because of the plot, but because of the fact that the book was over. The writing was so seemingly simple, but when you went back and dissected each sentence, you realized how thoughtful and provoking the words were. I'd never read any Louise Erdrich before, other than a New Yorker short story, but I will certainly be back for more. Shadow Tag is the story of a couple who really should be living apart, but there are forces larger than them...more

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Mar 20, 2011 Angie rated it 5 of 5 stars

I spontaneously picked this book up in the DC airport. I really loved it! I finished it in 1 flight a couple settings. The story is about a family and the struggles they face over several months. What makes the book interesting is that the family is Native American, so there is an underlying cultural story interwoven with the present day challenge. The other interesting point about this book is the premise-a wife writes in 2 journals. The first is the diary that her husband is reading. When she...more I spontaneously picked this book up in the DC airport. I really loved it! I finished it in 1 flight a couple settings. The story is about a family and the struggles they face over several months. What makes the book interesting is that the family is Native American, so there is an underlying cultural story interwoven with the present day challenge. The other interesting point about this book is the premise-a wife writes in 2 journals. The first is the diary that her husband is reading. When she discovers this violation, she begins a second diary which is kept in a safety deposit box at the local bank. The wife begins to use the first diary to manipulate her husband in an effort to secure the freedom of her and her family. The characters are all messy, psychologically marred and almost entirely without boundaries. The writing is emotionally convincing, offering a real peek inside the psyche of all the characters.

Great lines from the book include:

On the marriage the husband writes, "He was pretty sure she had married him for his art and then slowly found that his art was no fun to live with."
On the marriage the wife writes, "I cannot simply backspace emotionally and fall back in love."
On Love, "Infatuation, sudden attraction, is partly a fever of surfaces, an absence of knowledge. Falling in love is also falling into knowledge. Enduring love comes when we love most of what we learn about the other person and can tolerate the faults they cannot change."

"How you loved us, marred by anger, how you hated yourself, marred by vanity, and how you loved us. Like crazy. In a mean way. But love is love."

"He regarded his body with a tender regret. It was a thing his spirit had to haul."

The ending of the book was disappointing to me. It took me a day to realize it was the only way it could end, because it is not what I was expecting.

I highly recommend this book. If you enjoy seeing the inner emotional terrain (peeping tom style) of people in relationships, you will enjoy this book.(less)

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Mar 15, 2011 Malena Watrous rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love Louise Erdrich's writing, and I loved the hook behind this novel--a woman keeping one diary that she knows her husband is reading, and another in private. What makes the premise interesting and complicated is that she actually baits and goads him in the one she knows he's reading, trying to get him to leave her. He is abusive, and he won't let her go with the kids. Knowing some of Erdrich's painful biography makes the book even more riveting (and hard) to read. She's merciless in her trea...more

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Feb 28, 2011 Renee RoxanneAbeln rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fic-erd

Another stunningly crafted book from Erdrich. I loved "The Master Butcher Singers Club" and was excited to read this. The prose is beautiful, as always: poetic, but never florid. But unlike "The Master Butcher Singers Club," which is a story with many characters, their stories woven together over decades, "Shadow Tag" is a densely compact story of a family and a relationship over a short period of time.

Irene discovers that Gil has been reading her diary, and in an effort to extricate herself and...more

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Feb 26, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was floored that Louise Erdrich did not win the Pulitzer this year for her magnum opus, The Plague of Doves: A Novel (P.S.). That novel doubtlessly cemented her as a peerless wordsmith and unrivaled postmodern writer of satire cum tragedy. Her dazzling metaphors--pataphors, actually, place her in a pedigree by herself. She combines ripples of Philip Roth, undertones of Nabakov and the mythical, regional realism of Faulkner. Her locale is often within the Ojibwe Native populations of North Dako...more I was floored that Louise Erdrich did not win the Pulitzer this year for her magnum opus, The Plague of Doves: A Novel (P.S.). That novel doubtlessly cemented her as a peerless wordsmith and unrivaled postmodern writer of satire cum tragedy. Her dazzling metaphors--pataphors, actually, place her in a pedigree by herself. She combines ripples of Philip Roth, undertones of Nabakov and the mythical, regional realism of Faulkner. Her locale is often within the Ojibwe Native populations of North Dakota, as in The Beet Queen: A Novel (P.S.) and Love Medicine (P.S.) (as well as Plague of Doves). She has mastered the multiple-narrative voice, braiding multi-generations of families into an innovative whole.

In a striking departure from her previous work, Erdrich's Shadow Tag is a psychological examination of a marriage and family on the brittle brink of decay. Instead of the focus being on ancestral histories and buried secrets, the focus is on one family--Gil and Irene and their three young children--and their private devastations. Gil is an artist who achieved substantial success painting portraits of Irene, some of them deeply disturbing. Irene has resumed her doctoral thesis on a 19th century Native American painter whose subjects have died soon after being painted. This provides a stunning metaphor and theme for the title, Shadow Tag, a game where each person tries to step on the others' shadow, while protecting their own. Native peoples believe that their shadow is their soul. To step on their shadow or to paint their portrait is to steal their soul. Irene is one-half native and Gil is one-quarter, a fact that adds a personal engagement with the lore.

Gil possesses a stealthy, dangerous charm; he is haunted by jealousy and lashes out physically at their son, Florian. Irene, a tall, arresting beauty, drinks wine like water and keeps two diaries. She leaves a false, incendiary Red Diary for Gil to find (she is meting out punishment for his invasion of her privacy) and the true Blue one hidden in a bank vault. Gil and Irene inflict mental, emotional, and physical pain on each other as they struggle individually to maintain control.

Although narrated in the third person, the unreliable voices of Gil and Irene are woven in variously--through their introspection; by Irene's diaries; and from the children's uncertainties. The shocking candor of their actions is mired in dark motivation and murky intentions. A maddening cat and mouse game ensues; the Muse is a jealous mistress and will not be ignored. As Gil agitates over his final portrait of Irene, and Irene skillfully undermines Gil, a menacing cloud is cast over the family.

Erdrich controls her narrative with razor precision, deftly restraining and then escalating the spaces between words to arouse and intensify the reading experience. The prose is starkly sensuous, lean and taut, nuanced but inflammatory. The characters connect with a singed, bitter bite and a sable, blighted love. If you require "likeable" characters that are moral exemplars, this novel is not for you. However, if you want to sink your teeth into a bald and naked exploration of a shattered marriage, etched with moral ambiguity, you will not be disappointed. Moreover, the ending will stagger you with its poetic brilliance. It is one of the most thought-provoking final pages I have experienced in eons. A mouth-watering treat for literature lovers. (less)

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Dec 04, 2010 Kerfe rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This book starts out well enough, profiling a prickly marriage between a painter and his younger muse, revealing how the accumulated and unresolved anger spills into the lives of their three children. What happens when the all-encompassing passion of two meets, as it always must, a life beyond its isolating circle? What if one partner resists any change?

At some point the narrative loses its reality and becomes very one-dimentional. Of course I read the reviews that talk about the story being a t...more

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Nov 06, 2010 Ariana rated it 3 of 5 stars

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Jun 14, 2010 Julia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, literary-ficton

A beautifully written but heartbreaking novel about a very bad marriage.

Gil is a native and successful painter who obsessively paints portraits of his wife. Irene, also native, sometimes working on her PhD thesis in history and art, begins to keep two diaries: she knows Gil is reading one, so she fills it with lies, intending to hurt him. The other she keeps in a bank safety deposit box. Their three children walk on egg shells, try to stay out of their way, away from their abuse and alcoholism....more

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Jun 09, 2010 Jlaurenmc rated it 5 of 5 stars

Louise Erdrich has never appealed to me as a writer. Perhaps it is because I knew her only as a Native American writer, and felt her stories had little to do with my life. I also think I may have read a short story by Erdrich in my college English classes and didn't enjoy it then. For whatever reason, I largely ignored her subsequent career and book releases. Also for whatever reason, I picked up a copy of her newest novel Shadow Tag off the "new book" shelves at my local library last week.

Shado...more Louise Erdrich has never appealed to me as a writer. Perhaps it is because I knew her only as a Native American writer, and felt her stories had little to do with my life. I also think I may have read a short story by Erdrich in my college English classes and didn't enjoy it then. For whatever reason, I largely ignored her subsequent career and book releases. Also for whatever reason, I picked up a copy of her newest novel Shadow Tag off the "new book" shelves at my local library last week.

Shadow Tag tells the simple story of a family's daily life. Gil, the father, is a world-renowned artist whose paintings of his wife Irene have sold for large amounts of money and financially supported the family for many years. Irene is an academic who never quite finished her doctorate, instead focusing her energy on raising her children and posing for her portraits with Gil. Their children, Florian, Riel, and Stoney, range in ages from 13 to 6 years old and struggle with their own age-appropriate issues -- book reports and stuffed animals.

However, throughout the course of the novel, Erdrich describes those events which make the family not ordinary, but rather quite extraordinary. There are, first of all, the diaries. Irene is a journal-keeper, having written in diaries her entire life. One day, Gil breaks her trust and reads the diary Irene considers a private extension of her soul. With that betrayal, the family is sent into a tailspin of destruction. Gil is obsessed with his wife's private life, Irene with finding her privacy again, and the children with this tension that now exists between their parents. The children, Riel in particular, make the novel heartbreaking in its brutal honesty about the truths that they sense, even when nothing is spoken aloud.

Erdrich's writing is beautiful and haunting. She references the family's Native American roots, but never slaps readers in the face with an educational agenda. Rather, it is a novel about a family whose members happen to have Native ancestry. This ancestry plays a part in their lives, as all of our histories affect our futures. The narrative flows easily, even through changes in narrators and point of view from first to third. In the end, Shadow Tag evolves into the story of a family who loves one another, but also has its tragic flaws.

Interesting is the novel's connections to Erdrich's own personal life. She was married to fellow Native American writer Michael Dorris, but their marriage ended in divorce after they had three children together. Coupled with that tragedy, they were accused by at least one of their children of child abuse in later years. Erdrich's ex-husband committed suicide in 1997. While the novel differs in detail from Erdrich's own life, readers may find parallels from the obvious tragedy that exists in Erdrich's story and the story of Gil and Irene.

For more info on Erdrich's other books, see her HarperCollins Publishers website. In addition to being a bestselling author, Erdrich also owns an independent bookstore in Minnesota called Birchbark Books. (less)

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About Louise Erdrich

Karen Louise Erdrich is a American author of novels, poetry, and children's books. Her father is German American and mother is half Ojibwe and half French American. She is an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe nation (also known as Chippewa). She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant Native writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renais...more Karen Louise Erdrich is a American author of novels, poetry, and children's books. Her father is German American and mother is half Ojibwe and half French American. She is an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe nation (also known as Chippewa). She is widely acclaimed as one of the most significant Native writers of the second wave of what critic Kenneth Lincoln has called the Native American Renaissance.

For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/louise-e...

From a book description:

Author Biography:

Louise Erdrich is one of the most gifted, prolific, and challenging of contemporary Native American novelists. Born in 1954 in Little Falls, Minnesota, she grew up mostly in Wahpeton, North Dakota, where her parents taught at Bureau of Indian Affairs schools. Her fiction reflects aspects of her mixed heritage: German through her father, and French and Ojibwa through her mother. She worked at various jobs, such as hoeing sugar beets, farm work, waitressing, short order cooking, lifeguarding, and construction work, before becoming a writer. She attended the Johns Hopkins creative writing program and received fellowships at the McDowell Colony and the Yaddo Colony. After she was named writer-in-residence at Dartmouth, she married professor Michael Dorris and raised several children, some of them adopted. She and Michael became a picture-book husband-and-wife writing team, though they wrote only one truly collaborative novel, The Crown of Columbus (1991).

The Antelope Wife was published in 1998, not long after her separation from Michael and his subsequent suicide. Some reviewers believed they saw in The Antelope Wife the anguish Erdrich must have felt as her marriage crumbled, but she has stated that she is unconscious of having mirrored any real-life events.

She is the author of four previous bestselling andaward-winning novels, including Love Medicine; The Beet Queen; Tracks; and The Bingo Palace. She also has written two collections of poetry, Jacklight, and Baptism of Desire. Her fiction has been honored by the National Book Critics Circle (1984) and The Los Angeles Times (1985), and has been translated into fourteen languages.

Several of her short stories have been selected for O. Henry awards and for inclusion in the annual Best American Short Story anthologies. The Blue Jay's Dance, a memoir of motherhood, was her first nonfiction work, and her children's book, Grandmother's Pigeon, has been published by Hyperion Press. She lives in Minnesota with her children, who help her run a small independent bookstore called The Birchbark.

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Quotes from Shadow Tag

“Wherever the family was, these two dogs, both six-year-old shepherd mixes, took up their posts at the central coming-and-going point. Gil called them concierge dogs. And it's true, they were inquisitive and accommodating. But they were not fawning or overly playful. They were watchful and thoughtful. Irene thought they had gravitas. Weighty demeanors. She thought of them as diplomats. She had noticed that when Gil was about to loose his temper one of the dogs always appeared and did something to divert his attention. Sometimes they acted like fools, but it was brilliant acting. Once, when he was furious about a bill for the late fees for a lost video, one of the dogs had walked right up to Gil and lifted his leg over his shoe. Gil was shouting at Florian when the piss splattered down, and she'd felt a sudden jolt of pride in the dog.” — 5 people liked it

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