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The Antelope Wife: A Novel
by: Louise Erdrich

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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060930073
ISBN: 0060930071
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: April 01, 1999
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: March 03, 1999
Sales Rank: 95033
Studio: Harper Perennial

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Editorial Review:

Product Description:
The Antelope Wife extends the branches of the families who populate Louise Erdrich's earlier novels, and once again, her unsentimental, unsparing writing captures the Native American sense of despair, magic, and humor. Rooted in myth and set in contemporary Minneapolis, this poetic and haunting story spans a century, at the center of which is a mysterious and graceful woman known as the Antelope Wife. Elusive, silent, and bearing a mystical link to nature, she embodies a complicated quest for love and survival that impacts lives in unpredictable ways. Her tale is an unpredictable ways. Her tale is an unforgettable tapestry of ancestry, fate, harrowing tragedy, and redemption, that seems at once modern and eternal.

Amazon.com Review:
As Louise Erdrich's magical novel The Antelope Wife opens, a cavalry soldier pursues a dog with an Ojibwa baby strapped to its back. For days he follows them through 'the vast carcass of the world west of the Otter Tail River' until finally the dog allows him to approach and handle the child--a girl, not yet weaned, who latches onto his nipples until, miraculously, they begin to give milk. In another kind of novel, this might be a metaphor. But this is the fictional world of Louise Erdrich, where myth is woven deeply into the fabric of everyday life. A famous cake tastes of grief, joy, and the secret ingredient: fear. The tie that binds the antelope wife to her husband is, literally, the strip of sweetheart calico he used to yoke her hand to his. Legendary characters sew beads into colorful patterns, and these patterns become the design of the novel itself.

The Antelope Wife centers on the Roys and the Shawanos, two closely related Ojibwa families living in modern-day Gakahbekong, or Minneapolis. Urban Indians of mixed blood, they are 'scattered like beads off a necklace and put back together in new patterns, new strings,' and Erdrich follows them through two failed marriages, a 'kamikaze' wedding, and several tragic deaths. But the plot also loops and circles back, drawing in a 100-year-old murder, a burned Ojibwa village, a lost baby, several dead twins, and another baby nursed on father's milk.

The familiar Erdrich themes are all here--love, family, history, and the complex ways these forces both bind and separate the generations, stitching them into patterns as complex as beadwork. At least initially, this swirl of characters, narratives, time lines, and connections can take a little getting used to; several of the story lines do not match up until the book's conclusion. But in the end, Erdrich's lovely, lyrical language prevails, and the reader succumbs to the book's own dreamlike logic. As The Antelope Wife closes, Erdrich steps back to address readers directly for the first time, and the moment expands the book's elaborate patterns well beyond the confines of its pages. 'Who is beading us?' she asks. 'Who are you and who am I, the beader or the bit of colored glass sewn onto the fabric of the earth?... We stand on tiptoe, trying to see over the edge, and only catch a glimpse of the next bead on the string, and the woman's hand moving, one day, the next, and the needle flashing over the horizon.' -- Mary Park, editor

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Not Good
The tale was too esoteric. It was very difficult to follow. I could only last one chapter then I was off to sleep!

Rating:

- wonderful craftsmanship
I loved how the plot and characters in this book were so intricately woven together. The book left me totally full with imagery and language, and looking forward to reading more of Erdrich's fiction. (I also loved The Blue Jay's Dance - a non-ficiton work)

Rating:

- Oh, Deer Me
I have admired Erdrich's writing in the past---"Tracks" and "The Beet Queen"--so I was looking forward to reading another of her novels. I must say I was disappointed here. Though Erdrich, like N. Scott Momaday, has a highly poetical style and her pages are filled with beautiful images (which is certainly a positive characteristic), a novel after all needs to have a strong story line or a point. Beautiful sentences and poetic expressions do not make a story, even if spiced with magical realism, sex, recipes, and colorful beads. As a literary testimony to a section of Native American experience, THE ANTELOPE WIFE has great merit. But as a novel, in the company of all the novels of the world, I felt that in this case, Erdrich tried to stretch out her career and write the next book though her heart was not in it. Perhaps it was a bad time in her life. The novel felt to me as one written by a person "trying to ... Read More

Rating:

- Broken Whiteheart
This is only the second book by Ms. Erdrich that I have read and the first was a collaberation with Michael Dorris. For me, this book came off as very bizarre (a man breastfeeding a baby) and depressing (betrayal, loneliness and death). But the thin line between love and hate running through the book is compelling. And I enjoy how Louise writes in the POV or about particular characters. She did it in Crown of Columbus and she does it here. I find myself "becoming" her characters as I read each chapter. And the use of the Okijbwa language peaks my curiosity into the culture and lifestyle of these people. I can't rave about the novel because it was so unsettling. But I did enjoy it. She is a talented writer and I can't wait to read her other books.

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