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Love Medicine

3.95 of 5 stars 3.95 · rating details · 9,250 ratings · 670 reviews

The stunning first novel in Louise Erdrich's Native American series, Love Medicine tells the story of two families -- the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. Written in Erdrich's uniquely poetic, powerful style, it is a multigenerational portrait of strong men and women caught in an unforgettable drama of anger, desire, and the healing power that is love medicine.

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Paperback, 367 pages

Published August 1st 2005 by HarperCollins Publishers (first published 1984)

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Mar 28, 2008 Kirk rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: currently-teaching

Erdrich's first and still best-known work (because it's the one most often taught) has become something of a model for the contemporary short-story cycle, with interconnected stories devoted to a variety of interrelated characters spanning three (almost four) generations. The strength here is less in story (which centers on a love triangle and its effect on family ties) or character (vivid as they may be, they're still devoted women and unreliable men) than in style. I wouldn't call it lyrical b...more

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Nov 28, 2012 Lanea rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, women-writers

The novel is set largely on a Chippewa reservation in North Dakota, with brief forays to the Twin Cities. There is a family tree at the beginning of the book--refer to it as you read. This is essentially the story of two linked multi-generational families. The speaker shifts from chapter to chapter, as does the point in the time-line. Now we have the voice of a young student going home to visit her grandparents and worrying about her cousin, now the voice of that grandmother still a young woman,...more

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Feb 06, 2013 Sandra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Read the 1993 edition of this version, same publisher and page count.

Erdrich uses a series of vignettes that together describe a complex web of family dynamics over several generations, mostly on a reservation in North Dakota. At first it was challenging to keep the family members straight, but the stories are so compelling and realistic that one is drawn in as if visiting a long-ignored relative in her kitchen and getting caught up on the life-changing events a family experiences: the births an...more

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Aug 20, 2007 Luisa rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: novel & short story enthusiasts

To write a novel, start with a good short story. Then, write another. Then, another. Recycle your characters, put them all together, and you have a novel.
Yes, I'm being glib. Actually, I'm a big fan of Louise Erdrich's work. She transitioned from poetry to short stories into novels, and while the transition was not seamless, it was, and still is, a journey and a growth the reader can experience with her. Her early novels do read like short story collections with the imagistic intesity of poetr...more

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Jan 25, 2008 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read "Love Medicine" as an anthologized short story twice before I finally picked up the entire book. "Love Medicine" is one of the three most moving short stories I've ever read. Lipsha Morrissey's voice, his eye on the world, his confidence in his gift to heal, and . . . well, this implies the wrong metaphor, but his faith in the midst of suffering, his longing to connect to his own history despite its knotted-ness makes him a vivid and resonant character. Don't we all have screwed up famili...more

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Jul 27, 2007 T G rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: in-my-library

If you find yourself back in the 1990s and in a college course called "Native American women authors," you should definitely read this book. All other people, including time-travelers, should skip it.

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Jul 12, 2007 Steve rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Before I had yet read Karen Manuelito’s examination of the intersection of interests between indigenous “womanisms,” highlighting particularly the commonalities between the experiences of African American and American Indian women, I noted the similarities between the emphases on female experience in Morrison’s Beloved and Erdrich’s Love Medicine. It’s not by accident that Morrison’s is one of the strongest voices in the chorus of praise on the back cover of the novel, noting that “(t)he beauty...more Before I had yet read Karen Manuelito’s examination of the intersection of interests between indigenous “womanisms,” highlighting particularly the commonalities between the experiences of African American and American Indian women, I noted the similarities between the emphases on female experience in Morrison’s Beloved and Erdrich’s Love Medicine. It’s not by accident that Morrison’s is one of the strongest voices in the chorus of praise on the back cover of the novel, noting that “(t)he beauty of Love Medicine saves us from being completely devastated by its power.” Indeed, that tension between stylistic passages of lyrical beauty and heart-rending and impossibly brutal content becomes the hallmark of each author’s narrative. In each work, the principal female characters have had to suffer oppression and misunderstanding both from the outside “white” world and within their own relationships with husbands, sons, and lovers. Erdrich and Morrison each ultimately put forward the possibility of an empowered female subjectivity through privileged access to the community of other women.

Manuelito utilizes a number of theorists to support her own contention that Alice Walker’s notion of “womanism” is particularly helpful in understanding the particular experiences of women of color. As Janet Montelaro notes of Walker, “by foregrounding maternal subjectivities in her novel, Walker creates a prose fiction that conforms to her definition of womanist: it represents not only African-American women’s dependence on and support for each other, but also their commitment to self-esteem and their resistance to obstacles that would deny them a meaningful role in the creation of culture” (178). This seems to underline several common threads in Morrison’s and Erdrich’s works—they center many of their narratives on the specific struggles of women as their characters chart a balance between the prerogatives of nurturing, protecting, and providing for children, and the need to establish a strong sense of self-worth and individual dignity. There are correspondingly many different facets of womanhood available to strong women of color (such as Mother, Othermother/Othersister, Grandmother, Mother as Spiritual Leader, and Warrior) that aren’t as readily accepted within Euro-Western traditional roles.

Many of these unique facets appear in the story of Marie Lazarre (later Kashpaw). When we first encounter her, she’s a fourteen-year old girl pitting herself against the worst excesses of a colonizing form of western Christianity, embodied in the abusive and monomaniacal nun Sister Leopolda. Although the white authority figure makes use of familiar stereotypes that she borrows from the “civilization-savagism paradigm” to which Manuelito alludes, continually racializing the Devil as Indian—a figure who resides in the wilderness outside the convent—Marie resists the damaging internalization of this rhetoric by linguistically turning the tables on her oppressor. She does this by controlling the telling of events through her own narration and by uncovering the true motive behind Sister Leopolda’s efforts to gain Marie’s soul—the raw exercise of domination. Her description of the convent’s exterior demystifies it and strips it of its holy and God-ordained aura: “Gleaming white. So white the sun glanced off in dazzling display to set forms whirling behind your eyelids. The face of God you could hardly look at. But that day it drizzled, so I could look all I wanted. I saw the homelier side” (44-5). (less)

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May 12, 2013 Michelle rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-books, uni-reading, read-in-2013

It took a couple of pages before I liked it, but once I was gripped by the story, it did not let me go until the very last page. Erdrich has a wonderful writing style, it is simple yet poetic. Reading this was an absolute breeze.
There are a lot of characters in this book, and if the family tree in front of the book did not scare you at first (Really, I got Wuthering Heights flashbacks), you will be baffled by the amount of relationships and links these people have with each other. I often had t...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Lieve Brekelmans rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Louise Erdrich, I'll admit, we had a rough start. I don't like books with heaps of characters who are all introduced in the first few pages, making it impossible to identify either a main character or a character you can from that page on go and identify yourself with.

I'll also have to admit that I still did not know the characters after I read the last page, partly because I had not studied the family-tree printed in the front pages of the book and partly because you don't really need to in or...more

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Dec 01, 2008 Tattered Cover Book Store added it

Recommended to Tattered Cover by: Rob B.

Shelves: staff-recommends

Rob says:

If you haven't treated yourself to the storytelling of Louise Erdrich, this is a great place to start. Her characters are beautiful, tragic, fun and flawed. Sometimes all in the same person! Her subsequent works develop many of the people introduced in Love Medicine. Lots of great reading to be had!

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May 24, 2009 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 5-star-reads, erdrich-louise, 1001-books

A reader once said of Erdrich: "she puts her characters through a lot." I can't say strongly enough how much I agree with this statement. The story takes place between the mid-1930s and mid-1980s on an Indian reservation in North Dakota. The characters are two inter-related Native American families who exhibit typical human frailties and emotions. Five stars. I see that others who have read this and other Erdrich novels give it only four stars. It's hard for me to believe this author can produce...more

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Feb 16, 2009 Carrie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Love Medicine is a novel set in and around an Ojibwe reservation in South Dakota. It consists of a number of vignettes and stories about various members of two families on the reservation, the Kashpaws and the Nanapush/Lamartines, whose lives are interwoven in various ways. It is remarkably well written, particularly considering that this was Erdrich's first novel. She writes a number of different characters, with very distinct voices, each sounding distinct and authentic. And the writing is bea...more Love Medicine is a novel set in and around an Ojibwe reservation in South Dakota. It consists of a number of vignettes and stories about various members of two families on the reservation, the Kashpaws and the Nanapush/Lamartines, whose lives are interwoven in various ways. It is remarkably well written, particularly considering that this was Erdrich's first novel. She writes a number of different characters, with very distinct voices, each sounding distinct and authentic. And the writing is beautiful - she catches both the beauty and the ugliness of the reservation and the town, she mixes (what I imagine to be) traditional, native stories with modern stories, she jumps back and forth through different time periods. There is a lot going on in this book and Erdrich carries it off. She deserved her National Book Award.

I particularly appreciate what she did with the various stories, and how the novel intertwines two different modes of story telling - the traditional Western narratives of the novel with the intertwined multi-voiced traditions of native storytelling. I think the book does a clever job of playing with the question of what is a novel - at first glance it doesn't necessarily hang together as a novel, but the more I think about it, it does - thematically and narratively. On one hand, the story has no beginning and no end - there are so many characters telling so many stories that you can imagine a whole other book about containing more. However, the book begins with June purposely walking out into the snow and her death and ends with her son driving her lover/his father to Canada so that he can escape prison. And since escape is a theme throughout the story - many of the characters are trying to escape their circumstances, whether that be being born into a low class family (Marie Lamartine marrying Nector Kashpaw) or dealing with the after-effects of Vietnam (Henry Lamartine driving his car into the river), it seems to me like the book does tell a complete story - just not in a Western, linear way.(less)

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Apr 04, 2013 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookslut-100-books, fiction

(this review was originally written for Bookslut)

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich is exactly what I would want out of a "Best Books" list. Something unexpected but brilliant, foreign yet familiar. Love Medicine has a little bit of everything, all centered in a place rarely visited by most fiction: a reservation.

Erdrich shouldn't be new to me, but she is. Her novel Tracks was an assigned text in college, in one of those rare classes where you couldn't slide by without reading the books. But someho...more (this review was originally written for Bookslut)

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich is exactly what I would want out of a "Best Books" list. Something unexpected but brilliant, foreign yet familiar. Love Medicine has a little bit of everything, all centered in a place rarely visited by most fiction: a reservation.

Erdrich shouldn't be new to me, but she is. Her novel Tracks was an assigned text in college, in one of those rare classes where you couldn't slide by without reading the books. But somehow or another, I slid by, only reading twenty pages or so. It's not that it wasn't good, but it was college, and there were so many other interesting things to do. Having read Love Medicine now, I would rearrange my to-read pile to put Tracks closer to the top, but I think it's been lent out somewhere, and has yet to find its way back home.

Going and finding home are themes that run throughout Love Medicine, which is not so much a novel as a collection of short stories that wind tightly into each other. Each story bleeds through the rest, as we see the same characters over and over again, at different stages of their lives. Some stories take us far from the North Dakota reservation most of the characters would call home, while a many never leave it. But all those that leave eventually return. "The Red Convertible" winds from Winnipeg through Montana and Washington before heading back home. "Saint Marie" treks up the hill to the convent and then back down again to the reservation. The characters of Love Medicine have a sense of home that few of us do anymore.

To have such a fierce connection to a particular place is indeed unusual in this modern age of rootlessness. I read this book in Michigan, visiting my husband's parents, after having visited my own in Kansas, but I was soon to return to Arizona, where I am living now, far from any family of either my husband's or myself. Love Medicine made me yearn for a home like that, even despite the price some of the characters pay for the strength of their bonds.

For instance, in my favorite story of the collection, "Scales," home is not so much a place for Gerry as it is a person, Dot. So time after time, after breaking out of prison (and bragging that "no steel or concrete shitbarn could hold a Chippewa,") Gerry returns to Dot. Never mind that Gerry is 6'2" and no good at hiding. Never mind that every time, sooner or later the police show up at Dot's place looking for Gerry. For Gerry, Dot is home, and there is no place else he wants to be.

Erdrich's writing is simple and powerful, and above all else it is captivating. Her stories ring with both magic and truth. Whether you consider Love Medicine to be a collection of short stories or a novel, it is truly a gem of a book.(less)

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Feb 05, 2013 Andy Miller rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

I loved these intertwined stories about the interconnected lives of two families living on a North Dakota reservation between 1934 and 1984. The stories shift in chronology and narrator; certain events are told my different characters at different times with different conclusions such as the deaths of Henry(by a train while parked on a train track; was it a drunken accident or suicide driven by his wife's continued and open infidelties?) and Henry Junior(an accidental drowning or deliberate suic...more

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Dec 15, 2012 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book felt like walking into a small town and, over the course of years, sitting weekly for a long cup of tea with the oldest matriarch there who tells you, bit by bit, the stories of the people who live there. In that way, it took a while for the pieces to come together in the book. At first, the stories felt slightly disjointed, and I wanted some omniscient narrator to jump out of the book and say, "Listen, this is what's up between these two characters, and this is what happened with that...more This book felt like walking into a small town and, over the course of years, sitting weekly for a long cup of tea with the oldest matriarch there who tells you, bit by bit, the stories of the people who live there. In that way, it took a while for the pieces to come together in the book. At first, the stories felt slightly disjointed, and I wanted some omniscient narrator to jump out of the book and say, "Listen, this is what's up between these two characters, and this is what happened with that guy, and this is why this woman is so annoyed right now"... but life doesn't work that way. We never get all of the pieces of the puzzle. That's the magic of a book of stories like this. We get to learn the story of a reservation town in North Dakota piece by piece through the different voices of the characters. We have the privileged view of not only hearing the stories but being invited in to experience and feel the joys and sorrows (mostly sorrows) of these people.

I love Erdrich's writing. It has an easy elegance to it -- sumptuous but not oversaturated or pretentious. After having read several non-fiction books, I felt myself slowing down as I progressed through "Love Medicine" in order to really taste each turn of phrase. I could copy the whole book here for examples, but here's one that stuck in my mind from the earlier stories in the book: "Now, these many years later, hard to tell why or how, my great-uncle Eli was still sharp, while Grandpa's mind had left us, gone wary and wild. When I walked with him I could feel how strange it was. His thoughts swam between us, hidden under rocks, disappearing in weeds, and I was fishing for them, dangling my words like baits and lures" (p. 19). Erdrich's metaphors are graceful and not overwrought. This might quite possibly be the best metaphor for dementia that I've read.

Sometimes the stories were so sad, though, that I wasn't sure if I wanted to finish the book. The last story, however, is redeeming. Now I feel like I need to read the whole book again, because now I feel like I know the characters better. I feel like all of the stories will have a different meaning with each time they're reread, just like how we retell an event in our lives that we're trying to make sense of over and over again until it finally settles somewhere inside of us and sleeps.

"Love Medicine" is one of Erdrich's earliest work. I have her newest book, "Shadow Tag," sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. I'm a little wary, because it sounds depressing, but I also can't resist the pull of such good writing, and I'm curious to compare her writing now with her earliest work. (less)

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Nov 28, 2012 Sara Dyck rated it 5 of 5 stars

The characters, setting, atmosphere in this book are so graphic, detailed, I find it hard to believe it’s fiction. It starts with what feels like a mystery –why does June wander off in the snow in1985? To understand her, Erdrich takes us back through June’s family and her people in North Dakota, starting in 1934. This is not a linear book. Each chapter is told by someone connected to the family, braided over time, one character emerging, then another, the complex relationships becoming clearer b...more

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Jul 23, 2011 Joan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: r5-group

The book told the story of some of the Dakota First Nation people who lived on a North Dakota reservation from 1934 until 1984. The chapters focus on particular points of intersection between various characters and the sparks that arose from these interactions. Lulu Nanapush was a central character. She had 3 boys by different fathers, then she married a Lamartine and had 5 more boys, not all of whom were fathered by her husband. Marie Lazarre, a non-native, was another important character in th...more The book told the story of some of the Dakota First Nation people who lived on a North Dakota reservation from 1934 until 1984. The chapters focus on particular points of intersection between various characters and the sparks that arose from these interactions. Lulu Nanapush was a central character. She had 3 boys by different fathers, then she married a Lamartine and had 5 more boys, not all of whom were fathered by her husband. Marie Lazarre, a non-native, was another important character in the story, who married Nector Kashpaw, a Dakota, and parented/foster-parented many children in the community. The stories of the children are important to the book as well.

Louise Erdrich, the author, is herself a member of the Dakota First Nation and writes in a balanced manner, admiringly of the strengths and ingenuity of the people, but honestly of the way that characters made choices with unfortunate consequences. For example, Nector Kashpaw is ambivalent about his relationships with Marie and Lulu. Married to Marie, he has a long standing affair with Lulu, fathering at least one of her sons. Yet later, intent on forcing Lulu out of a house that she insists on occupying, he organizes arson that results in her being badly burned.

The religious order of nuns who ran the Sacred Heart Convent close to the reservation are also presented in a balanced way. The book was published in 1984, when the inappropriate behavior of religious communities towards the children in their care was not as widely known outside the First Nations community as it is now. Acknowledging that the brightest and most capable sisters were not the ones assigned duty at the reservation school, the author also describes terrible abuse of Marie by Sister Leopolda, being locked in a closet at school, scalded with boiling water in the kitchen of the convent, and stabbing her had with a fish fork. Marie narrates the story of the events interspersing her partial cooperation with the torture and her eventual escape.

The writing in the novel contains some wonderful phrases. In describing Nector Kashpaw's decline into confusion, his grand daughter Albertine notes that 'age had come upon him suddenly, like a storm in fall, shaking yellow leaves down overnight and now his winter, deep and quiet was on him.' Albertine later describes her Uncle Gordie Kashpaw's face 'His face was like something valuable that was broken and put carefully back together. And all the more lovable for the care taken.' After a wild adolescence, Albertine is training to be a nurse.

Sad, hopeful, a wonderful read.(less)

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Jul 03, 2011 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

I first read this the year or two after it came out in 1984, and I didn't have the proper framework then for appreciating it. I was expecting a linear narrative, and this is a braided narrative, in the tradition of Faulkner. It's essentially a loving portrait of a community, of the reservation. It begins with June Morrissey tragically striving to return to the reservation and ends with her son Lipsha joyfully if cautiously returning. In between are short stories--some describing the same events...more I first read this the year or two after it came out in 1984, and I didn't have the proper framework then for appreciating it. I was expecting a linear narrative, and this is a braided narrative, in the tradition of Faulkner. It's essentially a loving portrait of a community, of the reservation. It begins with June Morrissey tragically striving to return to the reservation and ends with her son Lipsha joyfully if cautiously returning. In between are short stories--some describing the same events from different points of view--assembled into a novel, interwoven portraits of a fallible and lovable set of characters who do as much harm as good to each other--often despite their intentions. I love Erdrich's comic portrayal of the dastardly Sister Leopolda, the fecund Lulu Nanapush, and the iron-willed Marie Lamartine. Nector Kashpaw, a servant to his desires as well as to the community, is also endearing. Shell-shocked Vietnam vet Henry Jr. is a sad and poignant figure. Every character is granted the grace of Erdrich's understanding--from Gordie's desperate alcoholism to Dot Adare's fierce jealousy. Amazing to me that this book was published in the glossy, commercial '80s and is so timeless, so unlike everything else from that era--a truly heartfelt paean to home. Lulu's tidy home seems the center of the novel, where every doily is in place, matched only by Marie's orderly kitchen with the perfectly waxed linoleum. Amazing to me too that Erdrich wrote this in her twenties. She gives elders their due not simply for their wisdom but also for their lusty and entertaining escapades. the novel stretches backward and forward into history--and Erdrich sometimes acknowledges her manipulation of time, as in Lulu's settling back into her female essence at night. If I could live anywhere, it would be on Moses Pillager's island of cats. Although it's clear Erdrich loves her characters, she doesn't go easy on them. Nothing is simple, no action is either good or bad, everything is relative, a web of causality. Magic informs the story as well--snow falling inside a room, a deer turning into a woman. Throughout are clear-eyed descriptions of the landscape and cityscape of the Upper Midwest--especially the story of fourteen-year-old Albertine running away to Fargo. Read this book slowly and savor every moment, every poetic line.(less)

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May 18, 2011 Anna rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008-or-before, bookcrossing

Not my usual type of reads. My mother-in-law recommended me this book, as the author is from ND and a native American...

The first story tells about June Kashpaw dying in a snowstorm after walking away from a man's car in the country. June was raised on a reserve in North Dakota and the rest of the book deals with all the other people who live or used to live on the reserve. The Kashpaws, the Morrisseys, the Lamartines and the Nanapushes mix and mingle. At times I found it hard to remember who wa...more

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Mar 03, 2011 Engl 328 added it

Louise Erdrich
Louise Erdrich was born in Little Falls, Minnesota she was the eldest of seven kids. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota where her parents influenced her to write. Her father was a German American, and her mother who was Native American. In 1972, Erdrich was one of the first women admitted to Dartmouth College. She majored in English and creative writing, and took courses in the Native American Studies program. She graduated in 1976.
At Dartmouth Louise met her husband professor...more

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Nov 13, 2010 Lorelei Yang rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: advanced-english-seminar

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. This was a really great, highly enjoyable read. Erdrich's writing is, as many critics have said, poetic and deeply influenced by the Native American storytelling tradition. Her characters —riddled with foibles and all-too-human shortcomings — could come out unlikable in another writer's hands; but when presented in Erdrich's prose, even the ethically ambiguous Gerry and unfaithful Nector endear themselves to the reader.

With that said, however, the sheer multitude of characters in this novel can...more

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Nov 04, 2010 S. Collingwood rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is the story of a group of Anishinabe people in North Dakota. The story emerges from the voices of three generations of people living on the reserve. Some are Chippewa, some are white. All of them have problems. This is one of the best books I've read about cultural conflicts for Native people, but it's not preachy. It just tells it like it is.

There are a lot of sad things that happen in this book, but it's also quite funny. Sometimes it's both. An example of this is the road accident...more

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Aug 23, 2010 Lynne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: patient readers

Shelves: american-experience

There are no short, pithy remarks I could possibly make that would do justice to this book, so I won't even attempt it.

To say this is a book about love doesn't cover it. To say it's about two Ojibwe families as they struggle to make sense of their lives as a conquered people in 20th century America is an inadequate description too. The book is entirely unique in its voice, vision, and purpose.

The story is told with multiple points of view from several narrators from the two families. Sometimes...more

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Nov 20, 2009 Ivana rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. When I first picked up the book in my college library for a book report, I instantly decided I wouldn’t like it. Starting with the cover, a Native American riding a horse. How appealing could a book on Native Americans be to a European girl who knows nothing about them besides what she saw in movies?
Neither the opening was too interesting. Okay, June is a prostitute, gets hooked up by a man in a bar and has sex with him. I sighed. This will be a long read. But the book report assignment said a c...more When I first picked up the book in my college library for a book report, I instantly decided I wouldn’t like it. Starting with the cover, a Native American riding a horse. How appealing could a book on Native Americans be to a European girl who knows nothing about them besides what she saw in movies?
Neither the opening was too interesting. Okay, June is a prostitute, gets hooked up by a man in a bar and has sex with him. I sighed. This will be a long read. But the book report assignment said a contemporary adult novel of 350 pages or more. So I nestled deeper into the bed and gave it another shot.
I can’t exactly point out the moment when I realized I couldn’t put the book down. I read it just the same day I brought it home. Little did I know what literary jewel I held in my hands, and what an astonishing world would unfold before my eyes. Needless to say, I got too deep into the story that I forgot to take notes and I had to read it again. At this point, I didn’t mind anymore. Not just that; having it finished for the second time, I ran to the library to pick up more of Louise’s books, The Beet Queen and The Tales of Burning Love.

Louise Erdrich tells an emotional story of two families-the Native American Family of Kashpaws and their “white trash” equivalent, the Lamartines. Following her seven main characters from 1934 up to the 1980’s, each character is represented through its own voice, each one unique and powerful. Louise’s use of language is a topic to discuss on its own; rarely have I read a novel that made me think this is pure poetry. Language is a tool to convey meanings deeper than what they say, a meaning beyond the poor semantics. The struggle of the Kashpaws to find their place in the American society and the struggle of the Lamartines to solve out their own problems, mainly associated to alcohol, domestic violence and poverty will weld into one single struggle when the families unite through a boy, Lipsha Morrissey. Limits between these two, each followed with their own obstacles, will blur; and you will discover that it’s not important who you are, or where you come from. What really counts is the power of love-often destructive, hate, anger, hope and willingness to forgive.
A valuable lesson-don’t judge the book by its covers.It is necessary to read the other novels from her Native American series to fully understand her character’s motivations. Read The Bingo Palace and Tales of Burning Love and you will understand the opening scene of Love Medicine, and many more. Another valuable lesson: always pay attention to the other side of the story.

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Oct 27, 2009 Courtney rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book meanders through the lives of members of an extended North Dakota family. It spans 60 years, chronicling moments from three generations of Chippewa.

The plot's orbit is uneven as it revolves around two centers of gravity: June Morrisey on her own, and Lulu, Marie and Nector bound together. That unevenness is not a weakness; it adds complexity to a book about the ways that love binds together us and pushes us apart.

At the outset of "Love Medicine," June Morrisey is alone, heading home,...more

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Dec 13, 2012 Lydia Presley rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, fiction, historic-fiction, social_issues, native-american-lit

Reading a book by Louise Erdrich is like sitting down to enjoy a finely-crafted meal. I'm not talking about comfort food like your mom makes; I'm talking about that insanely expensive meal that you can only afford because it's a special occasion and you want to create a memory with this meal.

This is the second book I've read by Erdrich (I read Tracks before this one), and the marveling at the craftsmanship of her writing continued all the way through it. She mixes fantastical elements with some...more Reading a book by Louise Erdrich is like sitting down to enjoy a finely-crafted meal. I'm not talking about comfort food like your mom makes; I'm talking about that insanely expensive meal that you can only afford because it's a special occasion and you want to create a memory with this meal.

This is the second book I've read by Erdrich (I read Tracks before this one), and the marveling at the craftsmanship of her writing continued all the way through it. She mixes fantastical elements with some of the most gut-punching, matter-of-fact observations by characters who just cannot catch a break.

Tracks introduces several characters that appear in Love Medicine, and then Love Medicine takes over and tells what happens to those characters. The major issues of land rights being taken away, language being lost, and religion shifting to something new and foreign are all addressed. In fact, Lipsha Morrisey addresses the issue with this heart-breaking passage:

"Our Gods aren't perfect, is what I'm saying, but at least they come around. They'll do a favor if you ask them right. You don't have ot yell. But you do have to know, like I said, how to ask in the right way. That makes problems, because to ask proper was an art that was lost to the Chippewas once the Catholics gained ground. Even now, I have to wonder if Higher Power turned it back, if we got to yell, or if we just don't speak its language... Was there any sense on relying on a God whose ears was stopped? Just like the government? (p. 236-237)"

Can you imagine struggling with something like this? Wondering if the God of the Catholics, the one who you have been told is the all-powerful, cannot understand you or worse... simply doesn't care?

And how did the government treat the Chippewas?

"They gave you worthless land to start with and then they chopped it out from under your feet. They took your kids away and stuffed the English language in their mouth. They sent your brother to hell (War), they shipped him back fried. They sold you booze for furs and then told you not to drink (p.326)."

Talk about a punch in the gut. None of these things were foreign to me - at this point I've seen them talked about in several different novels by different authors. But concentrated in that small amount of space... it's horrifying.

While I recommend Louise Erdrich's books whole-heartedly, I want to warn those who pick one up. They will pull at your heart-strings, you will struggle to get through the story. There will be tears, but only if you take the time to invest yourself and get to what she is talking about between the lines. Overall, it's an experience that everyone should have... but one you will only have if you give yourself over to it.(less)

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Nov 13, 2012 Zulu rated it 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed Love Medicine and I debated between giving it three stars (pretty okay) and four stars (very cool). In the end I went with three because, although the ideas and the setting were well done and nicely executed, in the end I guess I didn't feel that there was any one character that I could really latch on to and enjoy.

Which isn't to say that there weren't the possibilities for such characters. Only that we see each of them so briefly, and maybe their stories aren't fully carried through....more I enjoyed Love Medicine and I debated between giving it three stars (pretty okay) and four stars (very cool). In the end I went with three because, although the ideas and the setting were well done and nicely executed, in the end I guess I didn't feel that there was any one character that I could really latch on to and enjoy.

Which isn't to say that there weren't the possibilities for such characters. Only that we see each of them so briefly, and maybe their stories aren't fully carried through. Love Medicine isn't a novel so much as it is a collection of linked short stories. However, the links are more like a web or a netting. Not simply that all the stories are in the same world or with the same cast of characters, but the stories probably couldn't stand on their own without the other stories. And yet they're separate enough that I felt like I was missing the chance to stay with a certain character or a certain time period over the course of book.

For instance, one character that I quite liked was June Kashpaw. Her story in third person opens the book. We also hear a bit about her past and her childhood in some of the other chapters. But she dies very early on and then we can only know her through flashbacks or through the other characters' memories. And I was interested in her and wanted to follow her, but that avenue was blocked off.

Another character I wanted more of was Eli Kashpaw. His twin, Nector, gets two first-person chapters, but Eli is more of a secondary character. When they were boys, Nector went to residential school, and Eli stayed in the bush. Nothing wrong with Nector, but why two Nector chapters when we could've had a Nector and an Eli chapter? I'd be interested in seeing more of how their experiences mirrored each other's, or didn't.

Of the characters whose stories are carried through most of the book, Marie Kashpaw was probably my favourite. Her complicated relationship with religion and with the nuns who run the school was fascinating. You can see that the school is hurting her--that one nun in particular is abusing her--and yet Marie has a burning desire either to be a saint (to be a better nun than the rest of them) or to completely turn herself over to Satan. She wants both, desperately and simultaneously. She's drawn in by the abusive nun because they have a deep connection despite the hate between them: they both understand each other, and their positions within the school/nunnery, better than any of the other students or the other nuns. They alone understand that it's a battle for souls, that even when they're simply sitting in the classroom, or praying in church, there is something apocalyptic going on behind it all. This relationship is sustained even after Marie has grown up and become more invested in her secular life and gaining secular authority (through her husband Nector). She and the nun, Leopolda, are still battling even when no one understands that there's a fight going on. Marie's story could have been a whole novel.

Not that there weren't some benefits to the structure Erdrich chose. There's a much greater sense of community from all these interlinked characters' POVs. The politics within the community are made clearer from all the different angles. The messy relationships are viewed from different sides. It's possible to see the bush, the town, the reservation, as very different yet very interdependent parts of the characters' experiences. I think Erdrich does a good job of showing just how complicated it is to be a Chippewa in North Dakota during the fifty years the book spans. What it means to leave the reservation; to be financially successful, or to always be falling back into debt; to be drawn in to alcoholism or gambling; to fight for the tribe's rights both within the tribe and towards the whites and/or government. You get views of each and all of these things, sometimes from different characters' POVs, sometimes from one character's POV.

The description and prose is well done, but one of the problems I had was that there are so many different first-person POVs, but they aren't sufficiently distinguished. Their voices are pretty similar. If there weren't clues to who was talking or which chapter I was in, I don't think I could've told them apart. And one of the advantages of first person is the chance to get into a very distinct voice. That didn't happen here for me.

I enjoyed the book and the characters and the situations, but in the end I don't think it's going to be a book that really sticks in my brain.(less)

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Jun 12, 2010 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those interested in Native Americans and Lovely Writing

Recommended to Lisa (Harmonybites) by: The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Ultimate Reading List

Shelves: contemporary, literary-fiction, short-stories, ultimate-reading-list, novels, fiction, westerns

When I started reading this book, I was struck by the similarities to Sherman Alexie's THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN, which I had read recently; both books are on a list of recommended literary fiction I'd been working through and are the first published prose book by each author. Both are more a linked set of short stories than a novel, mostly told in first person from multiple viewpoints, set in an Indian Reservation--in the case of LOVE MEDICINE a Chippewa Reservation in North...more When I started reading this book, I was struck by the similarities to Sherman Alexie's THE LONE RANGER AND TONTO FISTFIGHT IN HEAVEN, which I had read recently; both books are on a list of recommended literary fiction I'd been working through and are the first published prose book by each author. Both are more a linked set of short stories than a novel, mostly told in first person from multiple viewpoints, set in an Indian Reservation--in the case of LOVE MEDICINE a Chippewa Reservation in North Dakota. Both books often feel bleak, filled with tales of suicides, alcoholism, and grinding poverty. (Erdrich's book was published about a decade earlier than Alexie's, and I wonder if she was an inspiration or at least an influence on his book).

I wasn't exactly happy at first to find those similarities--Alexie's book didn't impress me, and I thought that maybe I just preferred a more traditionally structured novel or it's just I'm not much of a fan of social realism. And well, both those things probably are true, but I wound up a lot more impressed with Erdrich--the tales, and her characters, felt much richer and packed a lot more of an emotional impact and in the end felt more than the sum of their parts; Erdrich felt the more reliable narrator. The prose is so gorgeous--often passages make you slow down to savor them and you feel this is one book you'll have to keep and return to read again.

Her book did take me a while to get into. At first I found the first chapter, with its plethora of related characters, confusing. When I completed that chapter, I was tempted to go back and create a cheat sheet and then saw the beginning of the book handily provided a genealogical chart.

What helped wasn't so much that though, but just reading--you eventually get to know the characters and how they all interrelate and for me those characters make the novel. Right after reading LOVE MEDICINE, I saw a mention of the work in a book on literature talk about how Lipsha Morrissey was the closest thing to a protagonist in the work, but for me the true center and the most unforgettable characters were the two matriarchs, Marie Lazarre Kashpaw and Lulu Nanapush Lamartine, around whom many of the other characters revolve in some way. Both are such strong-willed characters, you wouldn't dare feel sorry for either, and I think that's a lot of what kept LOVE MEDICINE from winding up feeling depressing, despite a lot of tragedy in this book. I was especially surprised to feel fond about Lulu in the end--believe me, for plenty of reasons, she's unlikely to strike most readers as sympathetic for much of the book.

To round out the comparison, although I found Alexie interesting for his window into into life in the modern American Indian reservation, his book didn't leave me wanting to read more of him. That's definitely not the case with Louise Erdrich.(less)

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Apr 14, 2012 Louise Broadbent rated it 3 of 5 stars

This seemed more of a collection of short stories about the same characters that Erdrich then tried to pin together as a novel, to me. I enjoyed reading it and some of the stories were wonderful - especially the earlier ones - but as a novel it was messy at best. I also think she tried to do too much in this - the wide range of characters stopped me from getting close to them, with the exception of Marie, which meant I didn't care about them and had little emotional involvement. The scale of tim...more

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Jan 10, 2011 Stephanie Jaros is currently reading it

THIS BOOK IS AN ATTENTION GRABBER..AT FIRST I WAS CONFUSED BY WHO THE NARRATOR WAS BUT I FOUND OUT THAT DIFFERENT CHARACTERS WITHIN THE NOVEL GET A CHANCE TO TELL STORIES THROUGH THEIR EYES. THE BOOK FIRST CAUGHT MY EYE DUE TO THE NATIVE AMERICAN SETTING. THE MAIN CHARACTER LIVES IN A RESERVATION AWAITING FOR A BUS TO GO HOME FROM THE CITY SHE GOES INTO A BAR. ONE DRINK LEADS TO ANOTHER AND SHE ENDS UP HAVING SEXUAL INTERCOURSE WITH A GUY IN HIS TRUCK. SHE MISSES THE BUS AND DECIDES TO WALK HOME...more

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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.

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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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