Wise and suspenseful…Erdrich’s voice as well as her powers of insight and imagination fully infuse this novel…She writes so perceptively and brilliantly about the adolescent passion for justice that one is transported northward to her home territory.” — Chicago Tribune
“Erdrich has given us a multitude of narrative voices and stories. Never before has she given us a novel with a single narrative voice so smart, rich and full of surprises as she has in The Round House. . . and, I would argue, her best so far.” — NPR's All Thing's Considered
“The Round House is filled with stunning language that recalls shades of Faulkner, García Márquez and Toni Morrison. Deeply moving, this novel ranks among Erdrich’s best work, and it is impossible to forget.” — USA Today
“Emotionally compelling…Joe is an incredibly endearing narrator, full of urgency and radiant candor…the story he tells transforms a sad, isolated crime into a revelation about how maturity alters our relationship with our parents, delivering us into new kinds of love and pain.” — Ron Charles, Washington Post
“A beautifully warm and wise novel…intensely involving…Erdrich’s profound intimacy with her characters electrifies this stunning and devastating tale of hate crimes and vengeance…Erdrich covers a vast spectrum of history, cruel loss, and bracing realizations. A preeminent tale in an essential American saga.” — Booklist , Starred Review
“The novel showcases her [Erdrich’s] extraordinary ability to delineate the ties of love, resentment, need, duty and sympathy that bind families together…[a] powerful novel.” — Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
“A powerful human story. . . .By boring deeply into one person’s darkest episode, Erdrich hits the bedrock truth about a whole community.” — New York Times Book Review
“A gripping mystery with a moral twist: Revenge might be the harshest punishment, but only for the victims.” — Entertainment Weekly
“Moving, complex, and surprisingly uplifting. . . likely to be dubbed the Native American To Kill a Mockingbird .” — Parade
“Erdrich never shields the reader or Joe from the truth…She writes simply, without flourish.” — Philadelphia Inquirer
“An artfully balanced mystery, thriller and coming-of-age story. . . this novel will have you reading at warp speed to see what happens next.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Erdrich’s bittersweet contemplation of love and friendship, morality and generativity…result in a tender, tough coming-of-age tale.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Haunting…a bittersweet coming-of-age tale…tender but unsentimental and buoyed by subtle wit” — People
“A stunning piece of architecture. It is carefully, lovingly, disarmingly constructed. Even the digressions demand strict attention.” — Newsday
“Joe may be one of Erdrich’s best-drawn characters; he’s conflicted, feisty one moment, scared and disappointed the next. The Round House will inevitably draw comparisons to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird .” — Miami Herald
“A sweeping, suspenseful outing from this prizewinning, generation-spanning chronicler of her Native American people, the Ojibwe of the northern plains...a sumptuous tale.” — Elle
“Erdrich threads a gripping mystery and multilayered portrait of a community through a deeply affecting coming-of-age novel.” — O , the Oprah Magazine
“The story pulses with urgency as she [Erdrich] probes the moral and legal ramifications of a terrible act of violence.” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“Erdrich skillfully makes Joe’s coming-of-age both universal and specific…the story is also ripe with detail about reservation life, and with her rich cast of characters, Erdrich provides flavor, humor and depth.” — Library Journal , Starred Review
“Riveting. . . . One of Erdrich’s most suspenseful novels. . . . It vividly portrays both the deep tragedy and crazy comedy of life.” — BookPage
“Each new Erdrich novel adds new layers of pathos and comedy, earthiness and spiritual questing, to her priceless multigenerational drama. THE ROUND HOUSE is one of her best—concentrated, suspenseful, and morally profound.” — Boston Globe
“Louise Erdrich’s prose is spare, precise, smooth as polished stone. Her books are rich with literary muscle.” — Austin American-Statesman
“The story draws the reader unstoppably page by page.” — Seattle Times
"A riveting mystery and a moving coming-of-age story.” — Columbia Dispatch
“Filled with stunning and poetic language, this new novel ranks among Erdrich’s best work.” — Martha Stewart Living
“The Round House will inevitably draw comparisons to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird , but Joe is no Scout Finch-like observer. He’s an older, more involved participant, shaped by his culture and influenced by ideas of justice from the warriors of Ojibwe legend.” — Kansas City Star
“While Erdrich is known as a brilliant chronicler of the American Indian experience, her insights into our family, community, and spiritual lives transcend any category.” — Reader's Digest
Moving, complex, and surprisingly uplifting…likely to be dubbed the Native American TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Erdrich never shields the reader or Joe from the truth…She writes simply, without flourish.
Emotionally compelling…Joe is an incredibly endearing narrator, full of urgency and radiant candor…the story he tells transforms a sad, isolated crime into a revelation about how maturity alters our relationship with our parents, delivering us into new kinds of love and pain.
Wise and suspenseful…Erdrich’s voice as well as her powers of insight and imagination fully infuse this novel…She writes so perceptively and brilliantly about the adolescent passion for justice that one is transported northward to her home territory.
The novel showcases her [Erdrich’s] extraordinary ability to delineate the ties of love, resentment, need, duty and sympathy that bind families together…[a] powerful novel.
Erdrich has given us a multitude of narrative voices and stories. Never before has she given us a novel with a single narrative voice so smart, rich and full of surprises as she has in The Round House…and, I would argue, her best so far.
NPR/All Thing's Considered
An artfully balanced mystery, thriller and coming-of-age story…this novel will have you reading at warp speed to see what happens next.
THE ROUND HOUSE is filled with stunning language that recalls shades of Faulkner, García Márquez and Toni Morrison. Deeply moving, this novel ranks among Erdrich’s best work, and it is impossible to forget.
Erdrich’s bittersweet contemplation of love and friendship, morality and generativity…result in a tender, tough coming-of-age tale.
A gripping mystery with a moral twist: Revenge might be the harshest punishment, but only for the victims. A-
THE ROUND HOUSE is filled with stunning language that recalls shades of Faulkner, García Márquez and Toni Morrison. Deeply moving, this novel ranks among Erdrich’s best work, and it is impossible to forget.
Erdrich threads a gripping mystery and multilayered portrait of a community through a deeply affecting coming-of-age novel.
Poignant and surprisingly funny, it’s the acclaimed writer’s best book yet.
A stunning and devastating tale of hate crimes and vengeance…Erdrich covers a vast spectrum of history, cruel loss, and bracing realizations. A preeminent tale in an essential American saga.
One of the most pleasurable aspects of Erdrich’s writing…is that while her narratives are loose and sprawling, the language is always tight and poetically compressed…In the end there’s nothing, not the arresting plot or the shocking ending of THE ROUND HOUSE, that resonates as much as the characters.
A sweeping, suspenseful outing from this prizewinning, generation-spanning chronicler of her Native American people, the Ojibwe of the northern plains...a sumptuous tale.
THE ROUND HOUSE is a stunning piece of architecture. It is carefully, lovingly, disarmingly constructed. Even the digressions demand strict attention.
Louise Erdrich’s prose is spare, precise, smooth as polished stone. Her books are rich with literary muscle.” -Austin American-Statesman
Austin American-Statesman
The story draws the reader unstoppably page by page.
Haunting…a bittersweet coming-of-age tale…tender but unsentimental and buoyed by subtle wit
Each new Erdrich novel adds new layers of pathos and comedy, earthiness and spiritual questing, to her priceless multigenerational drama. THE ROUND HOUSE is one of her best — concentrated, suspenseful, and morally profound.
A powerful human story…By boring deeply into one person’s darkest episode, Erdrich hits the bedrock truth about a whole community.
New York Times Book Review
Joe may be one of Erdrich’s best-drawn characters; he’s conflicted, feisty one moment, scared and disappointed the next. THE ROUND HOUSE will inevitably draw comparisons to Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD…
Riveting…One of Erdrich’s most suspenseful novels.... It vividly portrays both the deep tragedy and crazy comedy of life.
Cover/Feature Review BookPage
Joe may be one of Erdrich’s best-drawn characters; he’s conflicted, feisty one moment, scared and disappointed the next. THE ROUND HOUSE will inevitably draw comparisons to Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD…
One of the most pleasurable aspects of Erdrich’s writing…is that while her narratives are loose and sprawling, the language is always tight and poetically compressed…In the end there’s nothing, not the arresting plot or the shocking ending of THE ROUND HOUSE, that resonates as much as the characters.
While Erdrich is known as a brilliant chronicler of the American Indian experience, her insights into our family, community, and spiritual lives transcend any category.
Moving, complex, and surprisingly uplifting…likely to be dubbed the Native American TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
Wise and suspenseful…Erdrich’s voice as well as her powers of insight and imagination fully infuse this novel…She writes so perceptively and brilliantly about the adolescent passion for justice that one is transported northward to her home territory.
"Haunting…a bittersweet coming-of-age tale…tender but unsentimental and buoyed by subtle wit"
"Erdrich has given us a multitude of narrative voices and stories. Never before has she given us a novel with a single narrative voice so smart, rich and full of surprises as she has in The Round House…and, I would argue, her best so far."
All Thing's Considered - NPR
"Riveting…One of Erdrich’s most suspenseful novels.... It vividly portrays both the deep tragedy and crazy comedy of life."
Cover/Feature Review - BookPage
The Round House represents something of a departure for Erdrich, whose past novels of Indian life have usually relied on a rotating cast of narrators, a kind of storytelling chorus. Here, though, Joe is the only narrator, and the urgency of his account gives the action the momentum and tight focus of a crime novel, which, in a sense, it is. But for Erdrich, The Round House is also a return to form. Joe's voice…recalls that of Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, one of the narrators of Erdrich's masterly novel The Plague of Doves. That's appropriate because Joe is the judge's son…If The Round House is less sweeping and symphonic than The Plague of Doves, it is just as riveting. By boring deeply into one person's darkest episode, Erdrich hits the bedrock truth about a whole community.
The New York Times Book Review
Book by book, over the past three decades, Louise Erdrich has built one of the most moving and engrossing collections of novels in American literature…Joe is an incredibly endearing narrator, full of urgency and radiant candor…and the story he tells transforms a sad, isolated crime into a revelation about how maturity alters our relationship with our parents, delivering us into new kinds of love and pain.
…the novel showcases [Erdrich's] extraordinary ability to delineate the ties of love, resentment, need, duty and sympathy that bind families together…It is Joe's story that lies at the heart of this book, and Joe's story that makes this flawed but powerful novel worth reading.
Erdrich has given us a multitude of narrative voices and stories. Never before has she given us a novel with a single narrative voice so smart, rich and full of surprises as she has in The Round House…and, I would argue, her best so far.
NPR: All Thing's Considered
Poignant and surprisingly funny, it’s the acclaimed writer’s best book yet.
…a powerful human story…By boring deeply into one person’s darkest episode, Erdrich hits the bedrock truth about a whole community.
THE ROUND HOUSE is a stunning piece of architecture. It is carefully, lovingly, disarmingly constructed. Even the digressions demand strict attention.
Erdrich returns to the North Dakota Ojibwe community she introduced in The Plague of Doves (2008)--akin but at a remove from the community she created in the continuum of books from Love Medicine to The Red Convertible --in this story about the aftermath of a rape. Over a decade has passed. Geraldine and Judge Bazil Coutts, who figured prominently in the earlier book, are spending a peaceful Sunday afternoon at home. While Bazil naps, Geraldine, who manages tribal enrollment, gets a phone call. A little later she tells her 13-year-old son, Joe, she needs to pick up a file in her office and drives away. When she returns hours later, the family's idyllic life and Joe's childhood innocence are shattered. She has been attacked and raped before escaping from a man who clearly intended to kill her. She is deeply traumatized and unwilling to identify the assailant, but Bazil and Joe go through Bazil's case files, looking for suspects, men with a grudge against Bazil, who adjudicates cases under Native American jurisdiction, most of them trivial. Joe watches his parents in crisis and resolves to avenge the crime against his mother. But it is summer, so he also hangs out with his friends, especially charismatic, emotionally precocious Cappy. The novel, told through the eyes of a grown Joe looking back at himself as a boy, combines a coming-of-age story (think Stand By Me ) with a crime and vengeance story while exploring Erdrich's trademark themes: the struggle of Native Americans to maintain their identity; the legacy of the troubled, unequal relationship between Native Americans and European Americans, a relationship full of hatred but also mutual dependence; the role of the Catholic Church within a Native American community that has not entirely given up its own beliefs or spirituality. Favorite Erdrich characters like Nanapush and Father Damien make cameo appearances. This second novel in a planned trilogy lacks the breadth and richness of Erdrich at her best, but middling Erdrich is still pretty great.
