UUCY Book Club
Novel Incorporates Pandemic and Ghosts and Bookstore In Our July 11 Book Club Selection
“A bewitching novel…Strange, enchanting and funny…” “Erdrich can write a haunting story without invoking even the slightest hint of the gothic…” “… a staggering addition to Erdrich’s already impressive body of work.” Written by an esteemed author – and bookstore owner! – and set in a bookstore, this novel covers a year marked with stress and chaos, testifying to the healing power of books. Copies will be available at Wednesday coffees and Sunday services beginning the first week of June. It is also available in print and electronic versions from the Yakima Valley Libraries, and in Large Print edition. Get a copy and enjoy the read!
Join the friendly group at our Book Club meeting, Thursday, July 11, 2024, at 5:00 PM at our church home at 407 N 1st Street, Suite 3. NOTE the change of time to later in the day! Bring a snack to share if you wish. Everyone is welcome.
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. 2021. 400 pages.
In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman’s relentless error. Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, to the dead, to the reader and to the book.
A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Soul’s Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading “with murderous attention,” must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time surviving all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.
The Sentence begins on All Soul’s Day 2019 and ends on All Soul’s Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.
“The irreverent and funny Tookie grapples with the ghost, then the pandemic, then the protests. Her journey, captured in Erdrich’s expert prose, is a cathartic and comforting story that book lovers will gobble up.” — Real Simple
“Erdrich’s playful wit and casual style belie a seriousness of purpose, which in the case of this winning novel, entails tackling the pandemic, the death of George Floyd, the trials of doing time in prison and not least, the power of books to change lives.” — New York Times Book Review, Editor’s Choice
Buy or borrow your book!
Book description and reviews excerpted from Inklings Bookshop website.