On Louise Erdrich’s ‘LaRose’

Erdrich’s novel is slow to start, slow to finish — under-edited, dawdling, but ultimately threading together and healing.

Louise Erdrich
Fiction | Novel
384 pages
6” x 9”
Hardcover
Also available in paperback and eBook formats
Review Format: Hardcover
ISBN 978–0062277022
First Edition
Harper
New York, New York, USA
Available HERE
$27.99

Every time Louise Erdrich puts pen to paper, it’s a gift to the people of Earth. LaRose is no different, though in it one senses Erdrich has reached the sort of literary heights that prevents editors from reining her in, or perhaps from careful consideration on her own part. LaRose is a little bloated, peopled with at least one storyline too many, lacks narrative focus, at times, and is structured in no recognizable fashion at all.

Much like her flawless Round House, LaRose is centered on an opening tragedy: the accidental shooting of Dusty Ravich, a young boy, by Landreaux Iron, friend to the Raviches. To make amends, the Irons, Landreaux and Emmaline, give their young son, LaRose, to the Raviches, in custom with ancient Native American traditions. What follows is a torment akin to Erdrich’s Shadow Tag, but slow-burning and mitigated in a not-entirely-fulfilling way. The tempo and mood of the Irons and Raviches swing back and forth, LaRose himself a precious, preternaturally wise boy, who holds and heals both families over the course of three years, reminiscent of the healing in Love Medicine. However, Erdrich interweaves this tale with others: the story of the first LaRose, slices of elders talking myths over frybread, all in organizational patterns that appear haphazard. The first portion of the book uses pagebreaks; later, we’re given chapter titles, subtitles, and, again pagebreaks. When combined with the tertiary stories of the hapless and drug-addled Romeo, the fruitless love affair of Father Travis, the assault of Maggie Ravich — and the ensuing fallout — and the ultimately unresolved lives of Nola and Peter Ravich, Landreaux and Emmaline, the book feels ponderous. The first half sags, and the second is buoyed only by the well-drawn and imminently likable Iron and Ravich children.

Of course, Erdrich is incapable of writing a book that doesn’t draw you in, and LaRose does, slowly, inevitably, and the payoff is rich. Near the end of the book, Romeo’s storyline culminates in a pill-and-adrenaline-high confession to Father Travis, ending with his exit from the church to see the reservation below him:

From there, he can see down the hill into the narrow of the reservation town. High and mentally blasted as he is, he sees into each heart. Pain is dotted all around, glowing from the deep chest wells of his people [. … T]o the south there are the buffalo that the tribe has bought for tourism purposes. A darkly gathered congregation. Their hearts also on fire with the dreadful message of their extinction.

It takes a long while to get there, but Erdrich threads together most of the storylines successfully. The children of both families unite, Romeo and Landreaux end their feud, and Landreaux and Peter ultimately mirror the beginning of the book in a satisfying climax. In that climax, Erdrich is at her peak. Peter, blinded as many of the characters are with their individual and communal pains, is able to see

[…] all that he has kept himself from seeing. Sees the sickness rising out of things. The phosphorous of grief consuming those he loves.

Despite overreach or under-editing, LaRose is a powerful, life-affirming novel. Slow to start, and perhaps not wanting to finish, it lingers, dawdles, but ultimately does what every Erdrich novel does: it heals.