Shadow Tag

"Shadow Tag" is one of the best books I've read this year. I was warned that this is "a dark book". In some ways it is, and I don't usually enjoy "dark books". But this book is so beautifully written that I found myself awestruck by Erdrich's imagination and her spiritual, poetic way of expression. It's one of those rare books which I was very sorry to see ending. Is it a "tough book" as one other reader reports? In some ways it is. It's like life; there are dark moments. But this is not a book about hopelessness. It's a book about love, family, sacrifice, and survival. I doubt that too many people will read it without seeing something of themselves and something of their loved ones in the characters. Some of those things may bring up uncomfortable memories. Yet the beauty of the writing and the unusually revelatory characterizations make "Shadow Tag" a thoroughly fascinating, compelling, and enjoyable reading experience. Don't pass this one up. Yes, it is not a cotton-candy, "they all lived happily ever after" book. It's not a book where some people are "good" and others are "bad". The characters are a little like me, like my wife, my children, my neighbors - all portrayed with beautiful sparse prose which often shades into poetry.

As always, the characters rapidly become people one knows. One finds oneself wanting to help the characters make the right decisions. Sometimes they do. Other times, not. The reader finds her/himself waiting for the emotional impact to come. I had great trepidation over the outcome of this one. I was not wrong about the emotion, just about the nature of the events. I highly recommend this novel.

Arguably best known for the New York Times bestseller THE PLAGUE OF DOVES and my personal favorite, THE PAINTED DRUM, Louise Erdrich earned the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She is an American literary treasure. With an impeccable plot, rich prose and timeless questions about love adroitly answered, SHADOW TAG bleakly examines the mechanics of love and illusive personal identity in this noir tale of secrets and betrayal. That examination reveals that "[e]nduring love comes when we love most of what we learn about the other person and can tolerate the faults they cannot change." Protagonist Irene America explores the nature of love --- and trust --- when trying to establish her personal identity in a quagmired marriage, while quasi-celebrity artist/husband Gil assumes Irene's infidelity and reads her private diary. Gil violates a basic trust, and Irene manipulates him with information in the Red Diary that she knows he reads. Squirreled away in a bank safe-deposit box, the secret Blue Notebook reveals more of Irene than Gil's "starkly sexual" paintings of her without which he never may have acquired artistic fame. Financially secure Gil woefully compensates for violent outbursts and physical abuse with lavish gifts. Reminiscent of THE PEA AND THE PRINCESS, Gil can "feel a hair beneath a piece of paper." Presumably to show how sensitive he can be but on a physical level. There is mention of a spontaneous one-time fling that Irene cannot erase --- from the Blue Notebook or her conscience. Other than that, she is "faithful to Gil for the obvious reasons": her three children. His expensive gifts are reluctantly accepted, but it is the simple game of playing shadow tag as a family that has all of them feeling as though they are one. References are made about Gil's portraits being like shadows of the souls of her Indian forbearers. That is on a cerebral level far beyond my ability to accurately interpret. How can I capture in one sentence the pain of being a surviving descendant of genocide? While Gil grew up with witless TV sitcom drivel, Irene matured with Shakespearean tragedies but never the Bard's comedies. Fitting, given what befell Irene's (and Erdrich's) Native American heritage and peoples --- not only in this country but all of the Americas. Erdrich's novels have key characters descended from various tribes. She relates poignant lessons from that history to Irene's present ensnared marriage, along with her keen insight into the complex workings of a child's mind. To punish Gil for not releasing her from the marriage and allowing her to take the children, Irene coldly writes in the Red Diary: "None of the children have one molecule in common with Gil." Belatedly, Irene learns that "they argued sometimes for comfort." She sets a course for calculated, diabolical revenge. Irene justifies excessive alcohol use, which she says is to ease the pain of being trapped in a tragic marriage. She doesn't realize t

In controlled, spare prose, Erdrich lays bare the marriage between Irene, a woman who hates her husband, and Gil, the narcissistic man who can't bear to lose her. The story is told with surprising kindness towards the plight of Gil, the overbearing artist whose career is painting the wife he longs to suffocate. Erdrich's portrait of him has no mercy, but it does have great sympathy, even while coldly dissecting him. Less sympathetic is Irene, who will not take the steps she must to protect herself and her kids, sunk as she is in drinking. This is a grim book. The marriage melts like ice, and as the cracks appear, it is the three children in this family who are the most damaged by the blows their parents keep inflicting on each other. Florian, Riel and Stoney all cope with their father's violence and their mother's alcoholic withdrawal with heartbreaking resourcefulness. The only way to handle such a painful story is to tell it so beautifully that a reader has no choice but to keep reading, and Erdrich certainly accomplishes that here. Her telling is so measured, so cool, and ultimately unforgiving. Erdrich is not allowing any of her characters an out; no excuses, no mitigation, just a calm, dispassionate and very realistic portrait of a marriage gone horibly, destructively awry.

I was floored that Louise Erdrich did not win the Pulitzer this year for her magnum opus, The Plague of Doves: A Novel (P.S.). That novel doubtlessly cemented her as a peerless wordsmith and unrivaled postmodern writer of satire cum tragedy. Her dazzling metaphors--pataphors, actually, place her in a pedigree by herself. She combines ripples of Philip Roth, undertones of Nabakov and the mythical, regional realism of Faulkner. Her locale is often within the Ojibwe Native populations of North Dakota, as in The Beet Queen: A Novel (P.S.) and Love Medicine (P.S.) (as well as Plague of Doves). She has mastered the multiple-narrative voice, braiding multi-generations of families into an innovative whole. In a striking departure from her previous work, Erdrich's Shadow Tag is a psychological examination of a marriage and family on the brittle brink of decay. Instead of the focus being on ancestral histories and buried secrets, the focus is on one family--Gil and Irene and their three young children--and their private devastations. Gil is an artist who achieved substantial success painting portraits of Irene, some of them deeply disturbing. Irene has resumed her doctoral thesis on a 19th century Native American painter whose subjects have died soon after being painted. This provides a stunning metaphor and theme for the title, Shadow Tag, a game where each person tries to step on the others' shadow, while protecting their own. Native peoples believe that their shadow is their soul. To step on their shadow or to paint their portrait is to steal their soul. Irene is one-half native and Gil is one-quarter, a fact that adds a personal engagement with the lore. Gil possesses a stealthy, dangerous charm; he is haunted by jealousy and lashes out physically at their son, Florian. Irene, a tall, arresting beauty, drinks wine like water and keeps two diaries. She leaves a false, incendiary Red Diary for Gil to find (she is meting out punishment for his invasion of her privacy) and the true Blue one hidden in a bank vault. Gil and Irene inflict mental, emotional, and physical pain on each other as they struggle individually to maintain control. Although narrated in the third person, the unreliable voices of Gil and Irene are woven in variously--through their introspection; by Irene's diaries; and from the children's uncertainties. The shocking candor of their actions is mired in dark motivation and murky intentions. A maddening cat and mouse game ensues; the Muse is a jealous mistress and will not be ignored. As Gil agitates over his final portrait of Irene, and Irene skillfully undermines Gil, a menacing cloud is cast over the family. Erdrich controls her narrative with razor precision, deftly restraining and then escalating the spaces between words to arouse and intensify the reading experience. The prose is starkly sensuous, lean and taut, nuanced but inflammatory. The characters connect with a singed, bitter bite and a sable, blighted love. If you require "