The Plague of Doves in Around the Year in 52 Books

Nov 05, 2019 Nadine in NY Jones rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 100-best-of-21st-c, people-named-neve-niamh-lily-nadine, all-time-favorites, historical-fiction, fiction, audio

When we are young, the words are scattered all around us. As they are assembled by experience, so also are we, sentence by sentence, until the story takes shape.

This book is amazing! It’s complex brilliant rambling unexpected and beautiful.

The story was a complex tapestry woven so tightly and beautifully; I thought the ending would be just as tight, but it’s not. It sort of unravels. I found it a bit deflating.

The GR blurb makes this sound like its some sort of Native American murder myster ...more

3 likes · Like · see review

Jan 30, 2021 Ron rated it really liked it

Evelina Harp is a mixed-breed Native American living on a reservation near the fictional town of Pluto, North Dakota. As she is coming of age herself in the 1960's, and dealing with crushes on one of her distant cousins as well as the strange-looking nun working as their teacher, she hears stories from her grandfather's coming of age years starting in the 1890's.

When I say the plot gets more complicated from there, I mean it gets really, really complicated. Like you can read the book twice and y ...more

Like · see review

Aug 02, 2017 Ann rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1910s, tone-moving, writing-style-stylistically-complex, family-relationships, storyline-character-driven, 1970s, historical-fiction, mystery, native-americans-first-nations, storyline-intricately-plotted

I definitely didn't understand everything that happened in this book (my book club discussion was entirely an attempt to piece all the threads together, rather than our usual questions about symbolism and such), but I still thought it was marvelous. I love this type of book, exploring the lingering ripple effect of one event across generations, and I've rarely seen it written as skillfully as Louise Erdrich does here. ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Jun 06, 2009 Kathleen (itpdx) rated it liked it

OK, I get it. In a small, dying town, next to an Indian reservation, where most of the inhabitants' families have lived for three or more generations--everyone is related to everyone else by blood or marriage or involvement in the town's great tragedy, a murder and lynching. No surprise. Erdrich uses some beautiful language, but because of her round-about way of telling the story, I had to expend a lot of energy trying to keep all the relationships straight. For instance Evelina and Corwin are c ...more

Like · see review