The Round House - Through the End

[Tamara]

Feel free to discuss the entire book in this thread.

Please place spoilers under a spoiler tag like so... (< spoiler> < / spoiler> with the spaces removed.

[Janine]

It seems that while this is a story about a crime and identifying the offender, the central theme is about the jurisdictional boundaries across tribal and mainstream laws, and the injustice resulting from such ambiguities. Amongst other consequences, the inability to achieve justice through the legal system leads to an absence of any sense of safety for those affected by the crime. So other means of pursuing justice are explored - particularly by 13yo Joe. I'm always curious about what justice really means in the context of such crime. And maybe there are a few aspects to justice here - punishment, vengeance, safety, prevention...

I thought it was an excellent ending, with a twist that has profound and lifelong consequences for Joe. For me, the message appeared to relate to the value in being attuned to the spirits and the dreaming world, and the importance in taking the time to listen, consider and interpret their presence and their meaning.

Great novel. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for nominating this one, Ashley. It would have never made it onto my reading list otherwise.

[Ashley]

I agree with the central theme is about the jurisdictional boundaries across tribal and mainstream laws, and the injustice resulting from such ambiguities. It's bothers me that someone would be able to get away with a horrendous crime because of the jurisdictional boundaries. I also wonder if justice is really served by the courts or by other means. If someone chooses to seek other means is it going to haunt them for life?

Joe and Cappy really seemed to have a strong friendship and would do anything for each other. The ending left me surprised, but I thought it fit the book.

I'm having a hard time tying up all my thoughts on this book, but in short I really enjoyed it. Erdrich wrote a beautiful novel about a horrible crime. I definitely will be reading more of Erdrich's work.

[Darcy]

I have to admit, I found myself a bit torn about this book. On the one hand, it's a great story, really interesting and compelling characters, and quite a page-turner. The opening section, especially, was really striking, with the tragicomic interruption of a seemingly quotidian task of pulling up tree saplings, which takes on a much greater symbolic significance as the narrator looks back on it years later.

On the other hand, the plot felt to me to be a bit too much based on coincidence (especially Joe's discovery of both the gas can and the doll's head, as well as Linda's kidney donation that saves Lark's life). Erdrich is a great writer, but in this book her characters felt like very real people who do very unrealistic things, if that makes sense.

I also thought it was interesting that the book ends up, in some ways, making the rape itself disappear to a degree. I am not at all saying that the rape isn't important in the narrative--it clearly is, and Erdrich never lets the reader forget the implications of the rape for Joe and his family. Rather, that the rape of Geraldine ends up getting submerged into a complicated crime narrative that involves the state governor, adultery, bribery, extortion, etc. Lark is depicted as sadistic, psychotic, almost purely malevolent. He's just plain evil, the book seems to suggest, and that's why he does the things that he does. Perhaps more problematically, though, the book also seems to imply that Geraldine's rape is the result of a more complex net of crimes that have very little to do with her; her rape is the result of Lark's obsession with Mayla and $40,000 dollars in cash.

Given that Erdrich points out in the Afterword the prevalence of rape on reservations and the incredible problems that have arisen in prosecuting those rapes (anyone remember the debates last spring about sovereignty and the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act?), it seems a bit unsettling to me that the central rape in this book becomes so . . . covered over. A lot of sexual violence that occurs on reservations is the result of cultural pressures that encourage women to be silent and legal loopholes that make prosecution difficult. Women (and no doubt men) suffer sexual and physical abuse on a regular basis on reservations (and elsewhere) for a lot of tragic and yet utterly commonplace reasons: because it's easy to get away with it, because it enables a perpetrator to assert a sense of power and control, because the rapist has no respect for their victim as a person, and not necessarily because there's $40,000 in cash floating around. To be honest, I think I would have been a bit more impressed had the book really engaged with the kinds of sexual assaults that are actually going on, addressing how devastating such assaults can be even without that added gruesomeness of gasoline incineration or Geraldine's horrific dilemma of saving herself versus saving another.

This has ended up being more ranty than I meant it to be (sorry)! I did really enjoy the book and thought it was a great selection, Ashley.

[Ashley]

You bring up some great points, Darcy. I found the characters to be very believable but Joe finding the gas can and the doll did seem very unrealistic to me too. I think I inwardly groaned at both of those parts.

I also agree with the point about the crime of rape almost being overshadowed or covered up. I never really looked at it that way before, but everything you touched on I agree with. Erdrich definitely could have made the message of this book more powerful if she had made the crime more true to what is actually occurring on reservations.

I'm glad you enjoyed the book regardless of its faults!

[Cat]

Darcy wrote: "I have to admit, I found myself a bit torn about this book. On the one hand, it's a great story, really interesting and compelling characters, and quite a page-turner. The opening section, especial..."

Thanks for putting into words what I found bothersome about this book, Darcy. I wanted to know more about Geraldine and felt like she was glossed over, in this attempt to make her the "before-mother" along with the other sordid bits that were never really tied up or explained fully.

[Cat]

I enjoyed the ending of this book but I felt like the pacing was a little slow. She takes long digressions to "teach" about Native American culture, which I felt was unnecessary. I wanted the culture to be absorbed into the narrative, to push the story forward. I didn't think she should treat the Native American aspect as "exotic" enough to need teaching. I was willing to look it up on my own time if necessary and read the book for characterization and story. I especially felt this way during the long pow-wow. I found myself comparing it to The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and how Diaz has absolutely no mercy on the reader. In that book, if you don't know Dominican Republic culture, it's on you to look it up. I feel like Diaz believes that it's not the responsibility of the author to be the educator or the spokesperson for his or her race / ethnicity. I feel that way too, so felt bogged down in Erdrich's explaining.

[Darcy]

Yeah, I think part of what I find so bothersome about the glossing over of Geraldine's rape is that once it becomes intertwined with another crime, so does her recovery. Erdrich makes very clear that Geraldine really struggles to overcome the assualt, and yet it is not nearly as clear how much of that has to do with the assault and how much of it has to do with a sense of guilt. And I'm not really sure what to do with the fact that the novel never really seems to engage that question. At the end of her narrative about the attack, Geraldine admits that Lark tells her that if she moves he'll kill the bay and Mayla. When he goes to get the lighter, she leaves--she drags herself to her car, manages to get inside, start it and drive away. After this point, though, she maintains a complete silence about the attack. Why? She refuses to tell who attacked her, who else might be involved, that a baby was present. The novel implies that Geraldine acts this way in order to protect Mayla and the baby, but it's not clear why this would be a form of protection. A second implication, I guess, is that Geraldine is so unhinged by the rape that she cannot really think straight--she's acting the best way she knows how. I'm not blaming her as a character--she's not responsible for Mayla's death or Lark's actions. I just think it's odd that the narrative never confronts this as a problem even though this is clearly a book that wants to push at the kinds of decisions people make and why they make them. The end of the book is about the decision Joe makes to kill Lark; what about the decision Geraldine makes to leave Mayla and then not to send any assistance to her (not to call the police, report Lark, set up an APB, perhaps catch him in the act of covering up evidence, perhaps helping the police discover the car, etc)? Geraldine's eventual recovery ends up becoming linked with the baby and Mayla's safety--once she knows they are "safe," it seems she's able to return to a semblance of normality. But what about the rape?

Cat, I noticed that in one of the other threads you mentioned that some of the characters don't feel fully drawn--Linda Lark, for example. I totally agree; the book feels very uneven to me in this respect. Some of the characters are detailed and complex, while others feel more like caricatures present either to move along the plot in relatively sensational ways (Linda Lark) and others for comic relief (the sexual wise-cracking going on with the grandmothers, for instance). And don't even get me started on the bizarre strip scene with his aunt and grandfather. It ends up being a kind of odd assortment by the end, as though Erdrich couldn't decide whether to write a serious novel about how a sexual assault can tear apart a family or a funny coming-of-age novel about a cute thirteen year old kid.

[Darcy]

Cat, funny you mention Oscar Wao--I totally thought the same thing, mostly because of the Star Trek references. I'm not sure Erdrich is quite able to pull that part off, though. It felt to me like the Star Trek stuff made a concentrated appearance early on and then dropped out of sight part way through the novel, which is very different from how the sci-fi elements get incorporated in Oscar Wao.

I can see how both authors might be trying to re-image ethnic and racial minorities, though--to remind people that science fiction's utopian ideals are attractive to people in a lot of different cultures, not just dorky white young men, which is how sci-fi nerds often get stereotyped.

[Janine]

I wondered whether there would be some who had issues with the 'teaching' aspect in the novel. It didn't bother me. Similarly how the rape was handled and its consequences - and maybe that's because I've been overly exposed to sexual assault in my work over the past 18 months.

I must have been looking for an escape during the summer holiday and feeling leisurely and uncritical. Or maybe it's because it's the first non-work reading I've done in two years - but I really enjoyed it, despite the shortcomings others have identified. :)

[Tamara]

Really great discussion so far everyone!

I did not think this books was about rape but about a teenaged son of a rape victim coming to terms with his culture and his sexual identity, and the limitations and complications of both. If that makes any sense. I think maybe the rape is diminished in the story because that's not what the story is meant to be about. I found the most interesting and complex parts of this book to be when Joe was trying to understand the consequences rape in the context of the laws. He did not seemed so concerned with his mother being raped as he was with getting justice/vengeance for the person who raped her. And I also think this was a prominent theme of the books because his character telling the story is grown up Joe who is now apparently a lawyer so this perspective would make sense.

I thought Cappy's death at the end was a really interesting way to tie thing up. I felt it tied into the old native story we heard from Mooshum about the Windigoo.

I also saw parallels between "Oscar Wao" and Sherman Alexie's "Diary".

I didn't love this book but am glad I read it. I'll probably read more works by Erdich.

[Kamil]

I enjoyed this book quite a bit, despite some flaws.

I wasn't surprised by the ending. I was expecting Cappy's death since he was introduced in the second chapter as a "white cross on the Montan Hi-Line" (I reread this passage after the end of the book, and it seems even more touching)

"The other is a white cross on teh Montan Hi-Line", his physical departure is marked there, I mean. As for his spirit, I carry that around with me in the form of a round black stone. He gave it to me when he found out what had happened to my mother. Virgil Lafournais was his name, or Cappy."

The friendship between those two was one of the highlights of the book.

I agree with Darcy in almost everything. Even when she touches the aspect of Geraldine protecting Malaya as being not logically constructed however I would not expect logic form victim of such brutal assault. I think Geraldine's state resulting from the rape might explain the way Erdrich narrates that.

I didn't like the Mooshom parts much. I found it too didactic and slowing down the story. I think native aspect could have been implemented into the story better. I've read this one just after I've finished The Son by Philipp Meyer, where native culture was also vary important part of narration, however Meyer managed to fit it greatly into story-telling. In Erdrich's case I felt like I was reading a book within a book.

[Mary W.]

I meant to contribute to this discussion but by the time I got around to putting my thoughts together, the discussion period was long over. So I wrote a book review for my review blog, and gave a shout-out to this group. :) http://marywwaltersbookreviews.wordpr...