Tales of Burning Love

It took me a few years to read this book. It is not the punch-in-the-stomach Erdrich read as most other of her books. There are moments of brilliance, but it takes a bit of patience to get to each in this one. Still, she's one of the few writers that give me pause while reading to admire how much she fiercely loves her characters. Even if this isn't my favorite, Erdrich still has the main line to my soul.

Depending on how you looks at it, Jack Mauser hasn't been lucky in love (or in much else, or that matter): he has been married five times. He met his first wife, June, in a bar and asked her to marry him that same night. Following an argument, June walked off into a snowstorm. It's hard to say whether she got lost or committed suicide, but Jack is haunted by the fact that he didn't follow her. Eleanor was an emotionally fragile self-proclaimed scholar who focused on saints and religious ecstasy and eventually retreated into a convent to conduct research and her own spirituality. He met his third wife, a dentist named Candace, when a toothache hit and dental reconstruction ensued. As with June, Jack met his fourth and much younger wife, show more Marliss, in a bar, where she was not a customer but a server. She was to become the mother of his only child. Dot, Jack's last wife, just may have been a bigamist, albeit unknowingly. Her husband was serving jail time, escaped, and disappeared following a small plane crash.

The first half of the book details events in Jack's life and the bare bones of each marriage. He started out working on his uncle's sunflower seed farm but eventually veered into construction, investing in a rather shady scheme to build a subdivision. He has had almost as much trouble with the law as with his wives. But the story really kicks off after his wives attend his funeral (even though there is no body) and they become stranded together, along with a hitchhiker, in a car in the middle of a dangerous North Dakota snow storm. We've heard Jack's side of the story; now we are about to hear theirs. And despite many disappointments, each woman still loves Jack in her own way.

There's a lot more to the story (or "tales," as the title calls them), but I'll leave all the details and resolutions for you to discover. As usual, Erdrich's characters are all Native Americans, and a few that are familiar in earlier books reappear. Overall, I enjoyed the novel, which at times was sad but more often very funny. My only criticism is that it seemed unnecessarily long, and my attention often wandered. But I'm glad I didn't give up on Tales of Burning Love. show less

Good. Nothing particularly mystical this time. 4 ex-wives are trapped in an Explorer during a white-out blizzard telling stories of their marriages to the same man. Erlich continues to intrigue me with her ability to tell stories about a community with small inter-connections among novels that make them part of a whole tapestry but definitely not sequels of each other.

This book is a slow burn but a fascinating entry into Erdrich's Love Medicine series. You will certainly want to read The Bingo Palace first, as this acts as a quasi-sequel. Like, the novel can stand alone, but it works best as a part of the Love Medicine saga that Erdrich has crafted. Jack Mauser's former wives all have much to say and they spin out their tales in the middle of a deadly blizzard. It's a simple concept that almost doesn't work at the beginning, but totally does at the end.

A lot of the language was good but so much of the middle part of the book in particular read as if it was written by an alien who had heard rumors about human beings and maybe seen a soap opera or two but didn't know how real people speak or behave. These parts were cringeworthy and really made the book a dud for me.

Interesting novel for her - more mainstream. I liked it -- in particular I like how all of her characters inhabit all of her novels. Far from her best work, however.

i've been looking forward to reading erdrich for a while. i didn't love this book but it was decent. the storyline is just so-so but it bothers me that while the general idea is believable, much of the details along the way are not. the story didn't keep me engrossed but the writing is good.