Louise Erdrich writes novels of great richness. Her new novel, LaRose, her 15th, is the third part of a loose trilogy, along with The Plague of Doves and The Round House, all set around a Native American reservation in North Dakota and featuring some of the same characters.
It starts with the zing of a bullet as Landreaux, an Ojibwe man out stalking a deer, accidentally kills his neighbour’s young son. In accordance with tribal ways of administering justice he realises he must give the bereaved parents his own five-year-old son, LaRose. The fallout, for the boy, his family and the people around him, gives shape to her story.
LaRose’s narrative is only one thread among many. Erdrich’s novel is a large-canvas portrait of a community and this is where she excels, mapping out relationships, the bonds between people, the sense of shared experience, shared knowledge.
Erdrich is part Ojibwe herself and there are mythic elements at play here. Certain lines are filmier in this world – the line between the body and beyond, the sense of being tethered to the earth. But she blends this with a strong realist streak. There is a lot of poverty, alcohol and substance abuse, and damage in this community too. This is encapsulated in Romeo, the most vividly imagined of the characters, his leg and arm crushed when he was a child, a half man, living a half life, filching other people’s prescription drugs.
Erdrich is also great at conveying the fierceness of children, their grasp of the world and their place in it. The dead boy’s sister Maggie ends up keeping her disconsolate mother alive, with LaRose as her ally.
There’s something approaching a plainness to Erdrich’s style but she has a way of pinning things down in words. She hops nimbly between times and between characters, allowing us to see this community and the people in it through many eyes. There are a few baggy sections – it’s not as focused as The Round House, it meanders more – but it is still a book of beauty, a hymn to people’s ability to forgive.
• La Rose by Louise Erdrich is published by Corsair (£8.99). To order a copy for £7.64 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
