****** - Verified Buyer
4.5
When I read the readers' reviews and saw that they ran the gamut from five- star to zero, I knew I had to see for myself. I have read several of Erdrich's books and know how good a writer she is, how entertaining and also thought-provoking, funny and profound and deeply spiritual. This book is challenging in ways her others were not, at least, not for me. You just have to let go of your expectations and go along with wherever the narrator takes you, however bizarre. For me the story is like theater of the absurd or even a dark and philosophical Alice in Wonderland.Erdrich makes no effort to create a coherent dystopian world where you can understand how things fit together.Her story is more about how her protagonist-narrator Cedar/Mary Potts, deals subjectively with a chaotic and uncertain future in which evolution is reversing or suddenly veering off in bizarre directions. You won't understand it any better than she does, since it is her point of view. She is pregnant, and cannot be certain what sort of child she might be carrying, or whether either she or this little being will live through the birth. The overarching question that shapes the story is 'why go on with life, why bring another generation of human or humanoid beings into a world we no longer understand and where you cannot even expect nature to follow predictable patterns?' This theme is also carried out in Cedar/Mary's stepfather Eddy, a member of the Chippewa tribe, who also struggles with the existential question, 'why go on living,' by compulsively writing each day his reason not to commit suicide that day.The events, characters and dialogue often have the absurd but seemingly meaningful aspect of hallucination, dream or vision. e.g. : Two heavily pregnant women escape from confinement by unraveling blankets, reweaving the yarn into a rope and rapelling down a wall, bringing along items such as books on theology. Really? Yes. This is a hallucinatory world, a dark Wonderland, even in certain passages, a strange symbolic poem.When the world becomes incomprehensible, how and why should one continue to face each day, let alone bring children into it? Cedar/Mary's love of her child, her determination despite everything to bring it into this chaotic and bizarre existence is an affirmation of life, of faith in the eternal creativity of nature, which is 'the Word' of God.Erdrich's spiritual roots are with mystics regardless of their religion. The 12th century anchoress Hildegard von Bingham provides the epigraph of this novel: "The Word is living, being, spiritual, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests itself in every creature.' No doubt Erdrich intends this to link with the gospel of John, where it says that "In the beginning was the Word,and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things were made by Him . . ."Thus the future world, whatever shape it takes, will always be the home of the Living God, formed through the creative powers of Nature. Cedar/Mary knows this, and that gives her the hope and the courage to bring her child into the world, and to see him go into the unknown without herself giving way to despair.
