(side note: I have an essay up on Orion about why insomnia can be a little beautiful, and an essay on Brain, Child about why I got rid of all my parenting books) 

I’ve been studying Louise Erdrich’s new novel LaRose these past mornings. It’s been awhile since I’ve read anything so great that I wanted to go over it, sentence by sentence, and figure out what the author is doing and how the heck she does this (books I’ve done this with in the past: Wolf Hall (many times), Alice Munro’s short stories, Alice McDermott’s Someone) (I’m noting that these are all women authors–I wonder if there’s something specifically female in their use of language that makes me want to study their writing).

I love Erdrich’s dialogue, which sparkles, sparks, and is often hilarious. Her characters argue with fierceness but also with this underlying love (versus my own characters, who seem to argue with this biting meanness or detachment which I sometimes wish wasn’t there). Erdrich is not afraid to use exclamation points. And I find it interesting she doesn’t use quotation marks to note dialogue (despite my googling skills, I’ve been unable to pull up an interview where she reveals why. What came up, instead, were readers irritated at Erdrich for not using quotation marks. The Guardian has an interesting little essay about not using quotation marks, in which an author suggests quotation mark-less dialogue is “more immediate, more with it.” I can see how it flows more smoothly, perhaps seems more spoken.) 

Here’s some dialogue that I loved between a married couple, Peter and Nola Ravich. Some background, which will probably be very confusing (sorry): the Ravich’s next door neighbor, Landreaux Iron, accidentally shot and killed the Ravich’s son Dusty, so the Irons gave their own son LaRose to the Ravichs. Now Emmaline Iron (LaRose’s mom) wants LaRose back for good. Peter is trying to explain this to Nola and thinks it might help if Nola talks to Emmaline herself. I find the line about Landreaux’s height so funny, where Peter tries to say he’s practically the same height too. Nola’s cruelty when imitating Emmaline is so pointed and precise, and the shift in conversation, when Nola says she would kill Landreaux for Peter, is breathtaking. Throughout it all this warmth between Peter and Nola remains.  (I also think Erdrich is a master of really short paragraphs!)

“Two days later, he tried to have the conversation.

I just don’t like her, Peter, I don’t, because she is a self-righteous bitch.

Why do you say that?

Peter had read magazine articles that advised questions when you wanted to divert a way of thinking in another person. Or you wanted to stall.

Why? he asked again, then ventured. She’s your sister. You could try.

Okay, I’ll tell you why I can’t try. She’s got that program director’s attitude for one thing. Like, here’s Emmaline. Posing at her desk. Wehwehweh. I can listen. Listen with my hands folded and my head cocked. You know? Emmaline puts on her listening mask and behind that mask she’s judging you.

They were outside, at the edge of the yard. Nola ripped up a stalk of grass and put the end in her mouth. She narrowed her eyes and stared out over the horizon, that line at the end of the cornfields, between the sweeping coves of trees.

For emphasis she dipped her head to each side. Right. And left. Judging me.

She tossed the stalk of grass away.

Oh, I guess I could. Talk to her. If she would give back LaRose.  

Peter glanced at the ground, disguising his hope.

It’s been four days. I get it, said Nola. I really do.

I never said.

But I get it.

Peter nodded, encouraged.

I mean, it’s wrong, but I get it. She’s holding him hostage because she wants my attention. She wants me to be like, Oh, Emmaline, how are you, how is your project, your big deal, your this, your that, your girls that Maggie likes so much? How generous you are, Emmaline, what a big-time traditional person to give your son away to a white man and almost white sister who is just so pitiful, so stark raving. So like her mother that Marn who had the snakes. People never forget around here. And they will never forget this either. It will be Emmaline Iron the good strong whaddyacallit, Ogema-ikwe. The woman who forever stuck by that big load Landreaux and even straightened him out so he could, so he could . . . I’m just saying I would kill him for you. I see your face when you’re chopping wood. I’d kill him for you if it wasn’t for LaRose. So their damn unbelievable plan worked its wonder because now I’m better.

Peter questioned that now, but said nothing.

And nobody’s going to kill the big freak. He’s too fucking tall.

He’s only six three, murmured Peter. I’m six two.

I hope our son doesn’t get that tall. I hope LaRose doesn’t turn into a killer hulk.

It’s been a while now, said Peter.

Yeah, the years have gone by, haven’t they, Nola said.  

I love Erdrich’s depictions of imperfect families and imperfect marriages — couples and parents trying to love their spouses and families and sometimes failing, but still putting up with it. Nola and her daughter Maggie were particularly interesting to me.  Maggie, at first, seems to have oppositional defiant disorder. She is hateful and manipulative and cruel. (On LaRose’s first night at the Ravich’s house, Maggie kicks LaRose out of bed and onto the floor. “What are you crying for, baby? she said. LaRose began to sob, low and profound. Maggie felt blackness surge up in her. You want Mom-mee? Mom-mee? She’s gone. She and your daddy left you here to be my brother like Dusty was. But I don’t want you.”) (though LaRose and Maggie do end up loving each other and become very close). On the other hand, Nola, the mother, treats her daughter with cruelty and really hates her daughter, especially in beginning (“Nola’s eyes followed her daughter, sour death rays. She had raised a monster whom she hated with all the black oils of her heart but whom she also loved with a deadly confused despair”). It’s a complex and very real relationship. 

Erdrich has some great descriptions of less than perfect marriages too. In the Iron household, wife Emmaline is struggling to connect with her husband Landreaux after the accidental shooting which changed/ruined their life. Yet they remain married, and though their love has changed, it’s still love, I think. I don’t often get to read about unsatisfying love in a marriage where a couple stays married. 

Emmaline would not check out if he did; she would survive for the kids. For herself. Also, the good stuff was in question. Emmaline had put a wall up, Landreaux thought. He even pictured it— brick but at least there were gaps, maybe windows. Sometimes she reached both hands through, unclenched, and Landreaux hurriedly clasped her from the lonely side. He understood the wall as blame for what happened. He did not understand when she said he was asleep. His eyes were open. He was driving. He was pulling up in Ottie’s driveway.

And one last scene between Emmaline and Landreaux….I love how, in the excerpt below, Landreaux is trying to keep/accept Emmaline’s love, whatever she can offer him—which is different than what she offered before, when they first met and fell and love. Landreaux is trying to make this lesser or at least different love be enough. There’s some grief in that, some loss–but I love the image at the end, where Emmaline imagines she and Landreaux together, not in some idyllic paradise but in a slough with a “muck bottom” where “ducks batter their way across and up,” the place where Landreaux almost got killed. Probably not the place either of them want to be, but that’s where they are, and they’re there together.

He went straight to her, bent over and put his arms around his wife sitting in the chair. She put her hand up and held his arm. The kitchen light was harsh. She closed her eyes and leaned back. He pushed his chin lightly along the crown of her head.

You smell like outside, she said.

She kept her hand on his arm, frail gesture. Hardly the way a woman treats her husband when she’s become aware that it might be her cousin Zack who comes to the door. Hardly. Something, though. The hand on his arm hardly represented what had been their passionate marriage, their once-upon-a-reservation storybook time. She just held his arm. He leaned over her, his elbows on the back of the chair. Leaning wasn’t much, when compared to how they used to push a chair under the doorknob in a cheap motel where the lock was broken. They used to think they were something special. Lucky. They used to say they were sure nobody else had ever been this happy, ever been this much in love. They used to say, We will get old together. Will you still love me when I’m shriveled up? I will love you even better. You’ll be sweeter. Like a raisin. Or a prune. We’ll be eating prunes together. That’s the way they used to talk. But now they were tasting the goddamn green plums, weren’t they. Bitter. What about me? Will you love me? I don’t know, it depends on where you shrivel up. That’s the way they used to talk.

Landreaux straightened up and got two glasses of water. He sat down in another chair. Emmaline felt a surge of fear that suddenly contained what might be, could be, identified as possibility. She took a drink of water and closed her eyes. She saw a slough thick with reeds, muck bottom, tangled, both deep and shallow. She saw the ducks batter their way across and up. She saw herself, Landreaux beside her. She saw them both wade in together.

A friend of mine is considering reading all of Erdrich’s novels. I’m considering doing this as well, the problem being I have literally several hundred books on my to read list right now. I’d like to do this with Munro as well, read all of her work. I think it would be fascinating comparing the writing styles of Erdrich and Munro. Both write so exactly but without overdoing it. I never feel a forced lyricism or romanticism when I’m reading them. Erdrich’s books have a warmness to them, a connection to the community, while Munro’s characters seem often to isolate themselves, or be isolated. I feel like Munro is always looking to the landscape and rooms and people’s dress as a mirror to a person’s emotions. Erdrich does this but sparingly (although she does have a great description of Nola’s uncluttered sterile house, though that comes so late in the novel–until then we never really see the rooms that the characters live in). Hmmm, and why not throw in Alice McDermott too? Perhaps I see more similarities between McDermott and Edrich–McDermott’s novel Someone had such an underlying foundation of love, despite the various tragedies that cropped up, as does LaRose.