{"id":15985,"date":"2015-06-22T15:40:50","date_gmt":"2015-06-22T19:40:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=15985"},"modified":"2015-06-22T16:44:01","modified_gmt":"2015-06-22T20:44:01","slug":"louise-erdrich-the-flower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2015\/06\/22\/louise-erdrich-the-flower\/","title":{"rendered":"Louise Erdrich: “The Flower”"},"content":{"rendered":"
Click here<\/a>\u00a0to read the story in its entirety on\u00a0The New Yorker <\/em>webpage. Louise Erdrich's \"The Flower\" was originally published in the\u00a0June 29, 2015 issue of\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/pre>\n
\"June<\/a>Louise Erdrich is a Pantheon author on this site (see here), so fascinating and\u00a0important do I find her work since I first started reading it in 2011. That said, her last two novels, which happen to be the only two I’ve reviewed on this site,\u00a0have been a bit of a disappointment. Others feel differently, of course: her latest, The Round House<\/em>, won the National Book Award.<\/p>\n
With “The Flower” Erdrich returns to the Ojibwe country,\u00a0a world I have grown to love. In this case, we go into the history, to 1839.<\/p>\n
I look forward to the discussion below!<\/p>\n
\n
To get us started, here are some initial thoughts from Adrienne:<\/em><\/p>\n
Again, I am new to a New Yorker<\/em> author.\u00a0I have heard\u00a0Erdrich’s name before and even picked up one of\u00a0her books (The Master Butchers Singing Club<\/em>).\u00a0I had found the title fascinating but was not pulled in enough at the beginning to continue reading.<\/p>\n
I am sitting with those same feelings here after reading \u201cThe Flower.\u201d And I must begin with the title!\u00a0I understand why \u201cThe Flower\u201d was on the list for this story, but it seems more of a working title.\u00a0And the piece itself?\u00a0There were good ideas, pretty little nuggets, woven together, but then sealed with a rather flat and predictable ending — an ending meant to sew in the loose threads and keep some of the vicious things within quite neat and tidy.<\/p>\n
But I wanted more.<\/p>\n
At eleven years old, \u201cFlower\u201d is abandoned by her mother: sold to the trading post owner, into sexual slavery, for alcohol. The clerk, Wolfred, merely seventeen, recognizes the child\u2019s beauty and tries to hide the attractiveness from Mackinnon.\u00a0Eventually Wolfred comes to recognize, instead, the signs of her subjugation to the ruthless man\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n
For the first time in his life, Wolfred began to see the things of which he was capable.<\/span><\/p>\n
Wolfred sorted through his options . . .<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And this is when the story has a promise of becoming fun . . .\u00a0the head of a dead man rolling around, drums appearing out of nowhere, a grotesque poisoning, violent killing and re-killing, trips outside of the body and into the night air, dividing the self in parts and hiding some in trees . . .<\/p>\n
And then it just ends.\u00a0There\u2019s some more plot to bring us to an end point — missionaries and boarding school, names and proposals — but it is heavy and wooden after all of the earlier animation.<\/p>\n
I read in \u201cThe Page-turner\u201d that this was written — collected — from bits and pieces of Erdrich\u2019s upcoming novel.\u00a0It was disappointing to realize that this was not a story unto its own, but I was a bit relieved, too.\u00a0Maybe I will find something by Erdrich that I will enjoy from beginning to end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker<\/em> fiction is Louise Erdrich’s “The Flower.” Erdrich is a favorite author at The Mookse and the Gripes! Come join the discussion! Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[220,94],"tags":[560],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-15985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-louise-erdrich","category-new-yorker-fiction","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Erdrich-The-Flower.jpg?fit=320%2C240&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-49P","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15985"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15998,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15985\/revisions\/15998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15985"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=15985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}