From the Bookshelf of Ultimate Popsugar Reading Challenge…

The Round House

Louise Erdrich

Start date: May 18, 2016

Finish date: May 20, 2016

Discussion: 2016 Challenge prompts

Why we're reading this: Had never read this author.
[close] Had never read this author.

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2016 Challenge prompts

A book with a protagonist who has your occupation...
By Danah · 8 posts · 184 views

last updated Jan 27, 2017 08:22AM

The first book you see in a bookstore
By Juanita · 64 posts · 492 views

last updated Dec 29, 2016 04:24PM

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What Members Thought

Apr 10, 2014 Sam rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-club

I wish I could give this 3.5 stars. The book does a great job at telling a story from modern Native American perspective. So few writers can express this segment's views and needs and wants and dreams accurately. It is one depressing story however. I got so overwhelmed by the scope of the problems in the book that I had to put it down for awhile. I also found myself with white guilt for what has been done and is being done to this group of people.

I would recommend this book to groups and clubs t ...more

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Mar 21, 2013 Jane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: recentfiction

I do think this book is amazing.Very hard to read at times, because of the plot, but the characters are so incredibly realized sometimes because of how true they are to real people, people I can imagine caught in the awful circumstances of their lives, and sometimes because they are so fictionally compelling. Linda and Lark, the unlikely twins, separated at birth, propel the story in a way that seems like a fairytale, or some grim legend. Having lived and worked for six months on a reservation i ...more

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Nov 20, 2012 Brenda rated it it was amazing

Shelves: amazing

By this point I am a card carrying member of the Louise Erdrich fangirl club. Or I would be if such a thing existed. My point is that I'm bound to like anything this woman writes. Apparently I'm not alone since The Round House just won the National Book Award. Is this my favorite Erdrich? No, but that doesn't make it any less good.

Joe Coutts is one of my favorite Erdrich protagonists though. At thirteen he is sees the events of the novel with the clarity and tenderness of youth. And yet the maj ...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Kris Springer rated it it was amazing

Amazing, amazing writing. So much great storytelling about the Ojibwe & Chippewa tribes. Heartbreaking, so be ready for that. This is what I search for--a story & characters that challenge me & help me gain understanding of others. Wow.

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Dec 07, 2013 Anastasia rated it it was amazing

Shelves: racial-ethnic-experiences, fiction, womens-issues, 2014

October 2014 (2nd read)

Note: prepare to read the word “complex” and all its iterations a bunch of times in this review.
Reading The Round House for the second time definitely allowed me to more greatly appreciate the complexity of the story. I noticed, for example, the way the stories told by Mooshum are emotionally powerful and tragic, but still seem mythical and distanced in a way completely different from how what happened to Geraldine is portrayed: deeply intimate, complex, and somehow more m ...more

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Jan 04, 2019 Anna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The tragic plot of this incredibly well written novel centers on the awful fact that if a non native person commits a crime on tribal land he cannot be convicted of the crime. The tribe has no jurisdiction in such a case nor does the federal government or the state. The majority of sexual assaults against native women are perpetrated by white men. This book takes that awful injustice and puts the seeking of justice into a 13 year old boys hands. When his mom is brutally attacked and his stable f ...more

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