Title: The Round House Author: Louise Erdrich
Published: October 2, 2012
Genre(s): Literary Fiction
Page Count: 323
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:One of the most revered novelists of our time—a brilliant chronicler of Native American life—Louise Erdrich returns to the territory of her bestselling, Pulitzer Prize finalist The Plague of Doves with The Round House, transporting readers to the Ojibwe reservation in North Dakota. It is an exquisitely told story of a boy on the cusp of manhood who seeks justice and understanding in the wake of a terrible crime that upends and forever transforms his family.
Riveting and suspenseful, arguably the most accessible novel to date from the creator of Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, and The Bingo Palace, Erdrich’s The Round House is a page-turning masterpiece of literary fiction—at once a powerful coming-of-age story, a mystery, and a tender, moving novel of family, history, and culture.
To say The Round House is a book about a rape investigation would be unfair, though true. On a very superficial level, Louise Erdrich writes about the investigation and background revolving around Joe’s mother’s rape, but this is not really just some gloomy mystery novel. It is that, but this books is also an often hilarious coming of age story and a window into the rich heritage held by these characters. All at once, both Erdrich highlights sad realities of Native rape victims and portrays a preteen’s seemingly typical adolescence on a North Dakotan reservation. It’s a very masterfully written story, in my opinion.
Spanning the course of one fateful summer in 1988, this book is narrated by Joe Coutts many years after, as he looks back on when he was 13. The Round House opens with Joe and his father doing yardwork on an apparently ordinary day, which turns into a not-so-ordinary day when Joe’s mother arrives at home covered in blood and vomit. The rest of the book deals with the aftermath, how everyone (literally everyone) was affected by what happened to Joe’s mother.
Rape is a sticky subject that requires respect and concern. You can’t just write a rape into your book and putz around with the consequences, or brush of the severity of what you’ve just inflicted on your character. Louise Erdrich does not do that at all. She is mature in her handling of the subject, and she’s starkly honest. The Round House is absolutely excellent in the way it goes about dealing with rape and its aftermath. Joe’s mother is a very real character, and her actions are palpably genuine. Likewise, the way everyone else on the reservation behaves in regards to the attack is well-drawn. Erdrich didn’t just write this on a whim, and that’s exceedingly obvious.
Beyond rape, I think the author also touches upon the issue of law and justice when it comes to reservation lands. Who has jurisdiction? Who can be charged with a crime? etc. Joe’s father, who is a judge, has something of an Atticus Finch aura about him, and as both he and and Joe struggle to obtain vengeance for the wrong done upon their wife/mother, the reader gets a very real sense of how limited Indians are when it comes to dealing with crimes the involve white people or non-reservation lands. Their sense of impotency is frustrating for them, and also ultimately, for the reader as well.
However, The Round House is not always a sober, depressing read. Erdrich also highlights the richness of Joe’s heritage, the pains that come with growing up, and the simple, day-to-day conflicts of life, often in a way that’s hilarious and silly and touching.
At the same time, to say that The Round House is something of a mix between To Kill a Mockingbird and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is unfair, because Louise Erdrich offers her own voice and talents and sensibilities to the text. While reading this, I didn’t feel it was derivative of anything that had come before. This stands upon its own feet and provides a story worth reading and remembering, worth discussing and exploring. It’s not a fast-paced story, or entirely a pleasant story, but I’d say it’s not really meant to be. The things that happened in Joe’s life the summer of ’88 are true and valid, and The Round House is the kind of book that stands out and stays with readers. It’s not a happy novel, but I nevertheless believe it to be a necessary one.
