Collection

The Round House by Louise Erdrich is set on an Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota in 1988. Joe Coutts is a 13 year-old boy whose mother Geraldine is brutally beaten and raped in the reservation's Round House, a place of worship for the Ojibwe. His father, Bazil is a tribal judge. The crime and physical and emotional ramifications of the attack are devastating enough, but finding the guilty party and bringing him to justice is a different matter. Because Geraldine is unclear on exactly what show more part of the land surrounding the Round House the crime occurred, Bazil ensures that the tribal police, state sheriff and FBI are all called in to interview Geraldine and, hopefully, collect evidence. The overwhelming problem is that there is tribal, state, and federal land all intersecting at this location and where the crime occurred determines the jurisdiction involved. Adding to this quagmire, the attack could have stemmed from a court case Bazil heard or be related to Geraldine's job managing tribal enrollment. As Joe watches his mother sink further into depression and his father struggle with trying to determine who could be a suspect, he decides, along with his friends, to take the law into his own hands and look for clues as to who committed the crime.

In The Round House, Erdrich combines a coming of age story with a crime novel full of suspense. At the beginning we meet Joe before the attack and follow along as his childhood abruptly ends and he is mercilessly forced into adulthood as he and his father deal with the knowledge that the attacking was planning to kill Geraldine and doubt that the attacker will face justice because of the murky question of jurisdiction, the "Maze of Injustice," that still exists. Joe struggles with both is helplessness and anger over this impossible situation.

Joe and his friends are typical young teen boys, so there are occasions of sneaking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, and they also watch and relate to TV shows of the era. Eldrich includes a wide variety of relatives and people in her cast of characters and gives each of them an individual voice and personality. Her characters have a universal presence but also reflect specific people. It is this very ability to present a universal story but imbibe it with specific characters and circumstances that enables The Round House to create such an emotional, visceral impact on the reader.

Although I may not live on a reservation or be faced with some of the harsh realities the Coutts face, I can empathize with them because of the universality of the themes. In the Afterword, Erdrich tells us that "1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime (and that figure is certainly higher as Native women often do not report rape); 86 percent of rapes and sexual assaults upon Native women are perpetrated by non-Native men; few are prosecuted." This statistic is unacceptable (as all assaults upon women are unacceptable and inexcusable).

Erdrich, an accomplished and gifted writer, first introduced the North Dakota Ojibwe community in her The Plague of Doves published in 2008, and there will be a third part of this planned trilogy released in the future. The Round House is the winner of the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction. The Round House is not an easy book to read emotionally. It also contains some adult discussions and several stories of ghosts and cultural stories/myths.
Very Highly Recommended

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from HarperCollins and TLC for review purposes. show less

Avram Davidson is a master of short fiction but I had heard his novels, few as they are, didn't measure up. I was expecting a flub; that's not what I got.

Davidson adopts a voice in writing the Kar-Chee Reign that remains consistent and convincing throughout, and is a subtle alternative to many of the voices found in SF. The writing is evocative, the characters are interesting and the story and its underpinnings are complex and well-crafted. The aliens _are_ alien, their purpose aloof from show more the fate of humankind but huge in its impact, and the differing perceptions of the humans guide their responses to the aliens in intriguing ways. Like much of Davidson's fiction it is thoughtful and thorough rather than explosive and thrilling. A quiet, intelligent read. show less

Rocannon's World is Le Guin's debut, and you can sense the bones of greatness trying to poke its way out of the body of a conventional romantic adventure.

The novel begins with a prologue centered on Semley, a woman of the aristocratic Bronze Age warrior Angyar, who seeks a lost necklace that once belong to her ancestors. The necklace rests in a distant museum, in fact one orbiting a planet seven lightyears away, belonging to the high tech League of All Worlds. Semley retrieves her necklace show more and comes back to a land she barely recognizes after time lag.

Rest-frame decades later, League ethnographer Rocannon arrives to complete the survey of the planet called Fomalhut II. His mission to the warrior Angyar, technological troglodytes Gdemiar, and fey Fiia, is interrupted when a rebel faction of the League arrives and destroys his ship and the other 14 expedition members in a sneak attack. Now alone, Rocannon must make a dangerous journey to find the enemy base and get a message back to the League.

The science-fiction gloss covers what is basically a fantasy adventure. The most notable elements is that Fomalhut II's light gravity and high-oxygen atmosphere allow for large flying animals, including mighty windsteeds, which are something like winged great cats. Rocannon's last bit of high technology is a transparent and nearly indestructible survival suit, which saves him from being roasted alive by fearful midmen, a serf race to the Angyar. Rocannon's journey takes him to strange places, including a cave where he learns the secret of mindspeech, a key element in later "Hainish" cycle books.

This is Le Guin, so even weak Le Guin is a good book, but she's finding her feet. Characterization is thin, pacing is uneven, the imaginative elements are more sleight of hand than solid extrapolation, and we learn frustratingly little about the League or mindspeech, given how important both things are later. show less

I have to thank Ursula Le Guin and her early Hainish Cycle novels for restoring my ability to read, my desire to read voraciously.

The book itself showcases the imaginative powers of a great writer to be. Ursula is not yet at her best in this debut novel but already her story is gripping, the questions that she raises transcend the limits of her invented world and creep into our own. Gently the question of race is hinted at and the role of history in a racial divide. This is not a central show more issue in the book, just a footnote, just a preview of what is to come in Le Guin's later works show less