From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

The Round House

Louise Erdrich

Start date: July 15, 2015

Finish date: August 15, 2015

Discussion: Group Reads Discussions

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What Members Thought

Oct 06, 2012 Nadine in NY Jones rated it liked it

Shelves: literary-schmiterary, fiction, ohno-its-magical-realism, coming-of-age, national-book-award-winners, why-no-quotation-marks

Brother, I said, what made you come to the overlook?
I was always there, said Cappy. Every morning. I always had your back.
I thought so, I said. And then we slept.

This is a case of a really great book that I just didn't love. I'm not sure why exactly I didn't love it, I think there were quite a few small reasons that all added up.

Part of it is that I don't love magical realism, and I have little patience with ghosts.

Part of it is that I'm not overly fond of coming-of-age stories.

Part of it

Brother, I said, what made you come to the overlook?
I was always there, said Cappy. Every morning. I always had your back.
I thought so, I said. And then we slept.

I went out to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The well on the place sucked up sweet water. Sonja always kept a jug of it cold. I poured water into a Pabst Blue Ribbon glass—they collected beer glasses—and drank it down. Then I filled it back up for Sonja. I guess I wanted her to drink out of the same glass as me, though I really wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about how much money might be in the envelopes. I went back in and Sonja had a fresh shirt on—pink and gray stripes that pulled wide across her chest. The shirt had a stiff white collar and a buttoned tab. She drank the water.

Not a single one of those details matters to the outcome of the story.

Part of it is that I think a peanut butter and pickle sandwich sounds really gross, and they ate A LOT of them in this story.

Part of it is that I didn't fully sympathize with the characters, so I was impatient with them and their indecisions and poor decisions. I can't really sympathize with a 13 year old boy who stares at a woman's boobs the entire time he talks to her, and I can't sympathize with that woman either (view spoiler).

And part of it is that I thought the political message was a little heavy-handed. These are issues that need a lot of visibility, but it lessened my enjoyment of the book.

One thing that did not ever bother me was the complete lack of quotation marks to indicate dialogue. This was surprising, because I just finished another book (The Past) in which it was a big issue for me; I guess Ms Erdrich just has the perfect touch, it was seamless and I hardly noticed. Perhaps that's the difference between a good writer/storyteller and a great one.

This book fulfills the "National Book Award" category of the 2016 Popsugar Ultimate Reading Challenge. ...more

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Dec 03, 2018 Erica rated it it was amazing

Shelves: american-history

I won't ever be able to say enough about this book. Heartbreaking, beautiful, haunting, and real in a way that few novels are. (Also, any book that has a running commentary and inside jokes about Star Trek: The Next Generation WINS in my book.) Makes me want to explore everything Erdrich has ever written. So important, too, for this moment--our #metoo moment, the status of Native women in the United States, white privilege. One of the very best coming-of-age novels I've ever read--coming of age, ...more

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May 17, 2021 Astrid Lim rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: culture, america, law, race, mystery, popsugar-2021, indigenous

A very heartbreaking, but very real story of Native Americans in a reservation in North Dakota. It's so easy to feel connected to the characters in this book, especially with the narrator, a 13 year old boy named Joe. I also love Joe's friends, Cappy, Zack and Angus. They are all loveable, fun, even though they have to live in a difficult circumstances, they just tried to make the most of it.

This book made me know more about the challenges (especially in the 80s) that Native Americans faced, th ...more

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Mar 02, 2013 mstan rated it liked it

Shelves: american, src-spring-2013

This book opens in a gripping manner, setting a quick pace for the story of a loving family torn asunder by a violent crime. It is an atypical coming-of-age story for 13-year-old Joe, whose mother is the victim and whose father is a Native American lawyer bent on finding out the truth.

The mystery fizzles out too quickly though, and I couldn't really bring myself to care about the preternaturally mature-sounding Joe (who is narrating the story from the remove of a few decades - but this isn't cla ...more

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