April meeting

For those of you who are wondering what is next on the list: (to be discussed on the first monday of the month listed next to the title)

April: The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich
May: Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
June: The Post office Girl by Stefan Zweig
July: The Curious Incident of the Dead Dog in the Night Time by Mark Hadden
August: The Ghost in Love by Jonathon Carroll

This months book for discussion was The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdich. Caught up in the post-civil-war slaughter of an Ojibwa village, cavalryman Scranton Roy notices a baby bound to the back of a dog, hoping to escape his own atrocity he follows and rescues the baby. What follows is a densely inter woven story of Roy and the Ojibwa babies mother, and their family up to the present day. The novel is almost like a collection of snapshots in time narrated by different people, even a dog at one point. Erdrich manages to mix story telling with poetry and humor, to ask one of the oldest human enigmas: Is there a grand design behind our experience, or simply random chance or chaos. Although the novel had many great features, we felt as a group that it was a little disjointed and somewhat frustrating in that Erdich jumps through time frequently and introduces to many characters. We felt that if the book had come with an introduction or perhaps a picture of a family tree that it may have made the book more enjoyable and less hard work.

Happy reading, I'll shoot out an email when the next book comes in hopefully this week.

Ellie