Love Medicine (Love Medicine, #1) in Reading 1001

Dec 09, 2018 Dree rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-read, the-midwest, native-indigenous-am-can-lit, 2018-reads

This family saga takes place mostly on a Chippewa reservation in North Dakota. Different members of the Nunapush/Lamartine and Kashpaw families narrate the different chapters, going from the 1930s to the 1980s. We learn about their pasts, dreams, hopes, talents, loves, and failures. It is about kindness, love, grief, and more. These are very complicated and intertwined families, and keeping everyone straight was not easy, and the family tree in the front (which I referred to a lot) does not incl ...more

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May 08, 2011 Kristel rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-books, 1001-challenge, national-book-award

Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich is the author's first novel, published in 1984. It was revised and expanded in 1993 but I read the 1984 edition. The story is told in a storytelling manner and each chapter is told by a different person. The book regins with June Morrisey in June of 1981. She is walking back to the reservation in a spring snowstorm. She is the figure that holds the remaining novel together. The love triangle of Lulu, Marie and Nector is another theme as well as homecoming. Other t Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich is the author's first novel, published in 1984. It was revised and expanded in 1993 but I read the 1984 edition. The story is told in a storytelling manner and each chapter is told by a different person. The book regins with June Morrisey in June of 1981. She is walking back to the reservation in a spring snowstorm. She is the figure that holds the remaining novel together. The love triangle of Lulu, Marie and Nector is another theme as well as homecoming. Other themes include tricksters, abandonment, connection to the land, search for identity, self knowledge and survival. The story is set in North Dakota at the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation but also Fargo and Minneapolis but mostly the reservation. I read this book because the author was born in Little Falls, Minnesota. Wikipedia mentions that this book is written in the tradition of Faulkner. Having just finished Absalom, Absalom!, I can see that. Both stories are about family, the land and the myths that make up family stories. Love Medicine was awarded the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award. The title of the book specifically deals with a section where a grandson tries to fix his grandfather's love for his grandmother and cease chasing after Lulu. There are some great quotes about love;

"You see I thought love got easier over the years so it didn't hurt so bad when it hurt, or feel so good when it felt good."

"Them geese, they mate for life". I really liked this because Marie and Nector met each other with Nector caring a pair of geese that he had killed.

I also really appreciated the author's story of death. I liked this quote, ""It struck me how strong and reliable grief was, and death. Until the end of time, death would be out rock." and "Your life feels different on you, once you greet death and understand your heart's position. You wear your life like a garment from the mission bundle sale ever after--lightly because you realize you never paid nothing for it, cherishing because you know you won't ever come by such a bargain again." I also really liked the scene at the end of the chapter with Lipsha digging the dandelion's "the spiked leaves full of bitter mother's milk. A buried root. A nuisance people dig up and throw in the sun to wither. A globe of frail seeds that's indestructible."

I enjoyed this book and really appreciated this author's ability to write about the Native American experience. She took all the stereotypes and put them in this story in such away that you enjoyed meeting them as the story evolved. I enjoyed the themes of homecoming and death. It's not a very big book but it is packed full.
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Sep 15, 2013 Jgrace rated it liked it

Shelves: judithg, contemporary-fiction, 20th-century, play-book-tag, jgrace, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, read-in-2013, america-usa, american-literature, debut

Love Medicine – Louise Erdrich
4 stars

I’d met them before, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. These inter-related families reappear other books, but Love Medicine was the Erdrich’s first novel. I had the original 1984 version of this book, which it has apparently been revised twice since its original publication. This book is essentially a collection of related short stories. Each story is told from the first person perspectives of various characters. Each story is somehow related to the death of ...more

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Oct 02, 2021 Bryn Lerud rated it really liked it

Erdrich is a masterful writer and I enjoyed reading this story of 2 Native American families, the Kashpaws and the Lamartines. The story begins and ends with sad women which today, on the day of Women's marches all over the country, is sad all over again, and appropriate. ...more

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