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Love Medicine (Love Medicine, #1)

Louise Erdrich

Start date: May 1, 2022

Finish date: May 21, 2022

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Oct 06, 2020 Cheryl rated it liked it

Shelves: 2020-reads, love, fiction

What's your love medicine? If only you could give a person love medicine today and keep them safe from the virus, keep them safe from the hate, keep their heart fastened to yours. Alas, even Marie Kashpaw saw that things don't necessarily work out this way, at least not in ways we imagine.

The heart is deceitful to even the person who owns it, as most of these characters learn. Each person carries a deep need for transformation, an urgency to do something more, even if it means marrying the wron What's your love medicine? If only you could give a person love medicine today and keep them safe from the virus, keep them safe from the hate, keep their heart fastened to yours. Alas, even Marie Kashpaw saw that things don't necessarily work out this way, at least not in ways we imagine.

The heart is deceitful to even the person who owns it, as most of these characters learn. Each person carries a deep need for transformation, an urgency to do something more, even if it means marrying the wrong person. Each character seems to escape a traumatic past or seek a better future.

The novel follows Native American families: the Kashpaws and Lamartines. Louise Erdrich's mother is half Ojibwe and Erdrich is an enrolled member of the Anishinaabe nation. Her characters are also Chippewa. Although stark, the male narratives were introspective. Nector Kashpaw, Chippewa Chairman, was one of my favorites.

As for the female narratives, Erdrich waxes her females so lyrical that sometimes I got lost in the music of their words, followed their thoughts eagerly if only to hear the sound their words made:

I want to grind men's bones to drink in my night tea. I want to enter them the way their hot shadows fold into their bodies in full sunlight. I want to be their food, their harmful drink, to taste men like stilled jam at the back of my tongue.

These linked stories were a joy to read in Erdrich's unique, lyrical style. Some of the paragraphs are like poems, abstract, with sentences reading like verses. Some of the stories are from perspectives and voices so very different from others. The style is varied, just like the characters. Time is elusive. I swooned over some portions but found myself getting lost at the halfway point, especially when time traversed two decades, the story style changed, and I struggled to attach a character with a past story. At times I found myself skipping pages. The first part was definitely my favorite. What I enjoyed most about this novel was getting lost in the urgency of each character, watching heartbreak turn into love and vice versa, escaping into the frenzy of their lives. ...more

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