Love Medicine

In Love Medicine we meet people whose ancestors and descendants will populate so many of Erdrich's novels--the intertwined families of Nanapush, Pillager, Kashpaw and Lamartine, among others, including the nuns from the convent "up the hill". It's a story lover's dream, and a genealogist's Rubik's cube. It hits all my Faulkner buttons, too. The stories in this book are just pieces of the saga, and the big picture will never come clear until all the rest of the parts have been revealed, and shuffled around by one character and then another. I suppose this puts some readers off, but it’s the kind of thing that I just love. I give it 4 stars and a hug.

Nowhere on my edition of the book is it called a novel except in a blurb from a review. These are loosely connected stories that had a feeling of oral story-telling to them, passed down from one to another, with sharply drawn but not fully-developed characters and implications one only realizes later on. Erdrich is unsentimental but always compassionate toward life on the Indian reservation and its inhabitants. It's hard and brutal and there is not much joy or hope to be found. I did not, however, find this a bleak read, due in large part to Erdrich's eye for the absurd and her empathetic portrayal of these men and women. Some of the stories made me laugh and some brought tears to my eyes, but throughout, I reveled in the powerful prose.

Louise Erdrich writes truthfully but brilliantly about the native American lifestyle. This is the second book of hers that I have read (the Beet Queen being the other) and I am even more impressed by her abilities.

Some of this book was published previously as short stories in magazines such as Mother Jones and The Atlantic Monthly. I thought this novel would seem like patched together short stories but it doesn't. In fact, I have trouble imagining being satisfied by reading one segment alone. Each chapter seemed so intricately woven with the others that I can only presume that Erdrich conceived the whole story at one time.

The first story tells about June Kashpaw dying in a snowstorm after walking away from a man's car in the country. show more June was raised on a reserve in North Dakota and the rest of the book deals with all the other people who live or used to live on the reserve. The Kashpaws, the Morrisseys, the Lamartines and the Nanapushes mix and mingle. At times I found it hard to remember who was related to whom and how they were related. And I suspect that was deliberate because even they weren't always sure who fathered which child. But the urge to know one's family history is powerful and the children do figure it out.

I particularly liked the stories which dealt with an occurrence from several different angles. For instance, the story of Lulu Lamartine's home burning down is told from the perspective of Nector Kashpaw who was in love with Lulu (although married to Marie) and then from the point of view of Marie and finally discussed by Lulu. Each person has a different insight and remembers events slightly differently. Erdrich captures all the nuances expertly. show less

Love Medicine, first published in 1984, was Louise Erdrich’s debut novel. And what an amazing debut it was, winning the National Book Critics Circle Award and, over the years, becoming one of those books that repeatedly appears on school syllabi and book club reading lists. Despite all of this, I have only recently “discovered” Louise Erdrich, and after reading two of her later novels, decided to go back to the beginning.

Love Medicine is ostensibly the first in a series of loosely-connected novels set in a Chippewa community in the Dakotas. The book opens in 1981 with the untimely death of a woman in the community. We get a glimpse of the wildly dysfunctional family gathered together to remember her. And then the narrative goes show more back nearly 50 years, slowly introducing readers to nearly every name on the family tree provided in the novel’s opening pages. Every person bears emotional or physical scars, and sometimes both. Government interference in Native land management dramatically altered their way of life. Most have a bare minimum education level which affects their economic prospects. Some served in Vietnam and returned with PTSD. And alcohol use had an impact on nearly everyone. It’s an often bleak yet compelling novel, with moments of humor and and ending that offers hope,

What I enjoyed most about this book was connecting each character’s story to those in Erdrich’s other novels. In some cases, I already knew something about the character’s life either before or after the events in Love Medicine. I came away with a better understanding of one character, who was frequently mentioned, but mostly “off camera,” in another book. In the 25th anniversary edition of the novel, Erdrich wrote, “Since writing Love Medicine, I have understood that I am writing one long book in which the main chapters are also books … If you read on in the other books, you will find that the people in Love Medicine live out destinies invisible to me as I wrote this first book … That they keep returning, insistent and surprising, is a strange gift. Indeed, they have not finished with me yet.”

It’s these connections that will keep me coming back to Erdrich’s books. show less

What a lovely book. Erdrich follows intertwined families in the Chippewa Nation through three generations (at least), giving each character his or her own individuality, telling their own stories from their own points of view. Native American hardship is real, of course, as is community, competition and quarrels. Mix into that the Viet Nam war and its damages, alcohol and poverty, crime and incarceration - he pain wears on everyone. Each person's story echoes and modifies other stories, fills in the generational narrative, follows the thread of love. I can't believe this was her first published novel. A terrific book.

Enjoyed this a lot; a great first novel. It's a generational novel that's really a series of short stories, so not a page-turner - but each chapter had a pleasing shape and moments that touch the heart.

Despite the setting and bleak opening, there was a lot of warmth in this book. Characters are outrageous but not caricatures; they hurt each other and themselves, but they feel human and relatable.

The narrator that steals the show, of course, is Lipsha. A wise and witty young autodidact, his voice is totally unexpected and beautifully written. He's the spiritual heart of the book, yet his moments of insight are complex - he's definitely not a trope-y magical Indian.

Will read (and recommend) more Erdrich!

This is one of those works that sits just on the dividing line between "novel" and "collection of linked short stories." It gives us a series of glimpses into the complicated lives of members of several related families on a Chippewa Indian reservation, their stories intricately intertwined and told in multiple perspectives that skip back and forth through time. Which can be a little hard to keep track of, especially towards the beginning when you're still learning who all the characters are, but it turns out to be very much worth the effort.

This was Erdrich's first novel, and I do think maybe it shows, just a little bit. The only other novels of hers I've read are The Plague of Doves and Shadow Tag, but I remember finding both of those show more to be effortlessly beautiful reads that pulled me along compulsively. Whereas this one, in places, perhaps feels like it's working a little harder at to achieve its effect. But when the writing is at its best, wow is it good. show less