Author Archives: wendywelch

The Monday Book – The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

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Guest review by Janelle Bailey, retired Literature teacher.

Wow. What an amazing, wonderful, relevant and timely, well-written book. And what a very different book for Louise Erdrich!

I have read many of her books and have always decided to read her when I was prepared to engage in either dark or Native American experience or dark, Native American experience…but almost always (minus one book!) able to trust that I’d be engaging with smart and really good writing and that I’d come out on the other end better for the experience and the time spent there. (Okay, that one book was Future Home of the Living God; maybe I just didn’t get it.)

But opening up The Sentence has taken me on a tremendous adventure and, I think, directly into Louise Erdrich herself. She even terms it, albeit in the voice and term of a different situation, “autofiction.” I get it! Autobiographical fiction…not memoir but a special blurring of autobiographical fact but spun as fiction. This is the first I’ve seen the term, but it is completely apt! And it gives me the means to re-see and talk anew about, say, Ayad Akhtar’s Homeland Elegies. I think that’s what that is, too.

So this is all to say that Louise Erdrich is a character in this novel…that is written by Louise Erdrich. And the bookstore that Louise Erdrich owns, Birchbark Books, located in St. Paul, Minnnesota, is both real and a specific setting in this novel. And I LOVE that I have been there multiple times, know it exactly as it is described here, have never seen Ms. Erdrich there herself, unfortunately, though I have absolutely entered the store with hope of that every single time. And I have eaten multiple brunches at the elegant and simple restaurant just two doors away that is also mentioned here, along with the school across the little busy road. So in all of these things, there is truth and reality and fact. And that is the case, also, with much that the book so relevantly for its contemporary and current setting of time also discusses: the pandemic, the shutting down of all things, the “abundance of caution” with which many of us proceed, the strange dismissal by so many of science and the horror of their choosing conspiracy and some strange idolatry over everyone else’s desire to do right by and for alllllll involved. Okay, in all honesty, those issues are actually presented more subtly and are more PC in the book than I feel them myself. Erdrich is so smart. The novel does have a thoughtful character assert that: “I really believe that to live inauthentically is to live in a sort of hell” (347).

This book is set in and addresses the realities, too, of George Floyd’s death and all that followed, police officers and that work as a reality and conundrum at the moment, including this novel’s main character’s husband being a former tribal officer and his grandmother’s warning him long ago to “Watch out…for when that uniform starts to wear you” (283). Wow.

Additionally, I am entangled in notes of all of the authors and books that are mentioned within this book, that wonderful thing happening when authors reference titles and authors known to the reader so engaged anew in the mind of the author and feeling that very special reading kismet as well as frantically wishing to also read and soon everything mentioned not already read or shared by the reader.

And there are so many other good things layered in this book–families and culture and tradition and love and heartbreak and most especially spirits–and which, if you read my reviews with any consistency, you know I never reveal all details thereof, for I never aim to spoil but to strongly encourage you, in this case, to also read the book…so that we can talk about it together and share our reading heads and reading hearts and build a community and a bridge to an even better way of living…together.

Read this one and soon. I do not think you will be disappointed.

Mr. Griffin’s Breakfast

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Since I’m not driving in DC unless fleeing zombies, I parked my car in Springfield and got a hotel the night before the Rural Health Policy Institute. The less said about that hotel, the better, but next morning figuring anything would be better than the basement breakfast offered in that Shining-esque place, I googled “best breakfast in Springfield” and discovered it was .5 miles from me.

Healthy walk, early morning, they opened at 7. And apparently the Silver Diner is famous. Seated and served, I watched the cavern full of faux chrome fill quickly. Hipsters in slouch hats talking computers. Two businessmen in skinny ties, clearly having a power breakfast. The twentysomething sliding into a seat at the counter wearing last night’s party clothes, who ordered a mimosa.

Silver Diner in Springfield, VA

The waitress gave him side-eye.

The hostess Juanita was a jovial woman, chatting up the customers and basically covering for the fact that two people in the kitchen and two on the floor were working the whole diner—which probably sat 150 easy.

And I’m sitting there watching the power brokers and the people taking selfies in a famous restaurant and feeling vague existential dread because I have to go to DC and the last time was 2019 and humanity as we know it is way over with since then, and in comes this little old man. Slouching, not in a slouching hat. He waves and the hostess waves back and he walks past the Please wait to be seated sign to sit in the booth behind me.

The hostess brings him a huge mug of coffee and says, “The two biscuits?”

There is a pause. She repeats the phrase, louder, and he says, “Yes please.”

“You forget your hearing aids again?” From the corner of my eye, I can see her put her hands on her hips and give him a playful remonstrating stance, one foot tapping. She is grinning.

I hear a faint mumble that could have been “Yes ma’am” or “What’s it to you” but either way she laughs and walks past me shaking her head.

I tuck into my delicious and complicated Eggs Benedict. The waitress comes around the bar with two biscuits and gravy. Loudly, she enunciates, “Here are your biscuit, Mr. Griffin.”

I hear a plate land behind me. Then I hear contented chewing. But that might have been me.

A few minutes later the waitress passes by, pauses out of my sight line, says, “You done?”

The man mutters something that takes a good ten seconds.

“That’s okay. I’ll be here tomorrow. Just make sure you pay me. I’ll tell Juanita.”

Mr. Griffin has forgotten his wallet. I wonder briefly if he’s poor and they are giving him dignity for breakfast, but no, she laughs and adds, “Everybody knows you’re good for it.”

Exit shuffling slouchy man, looking well pleased with his breakfast. He has a dab of gravy on his jacket.

I thought the edge of the blue Metro line headed into DC didn’t hold much of a community, but I could be wrong. Either way, Mr. Griffin’s breakfast quelled my existential dread. Sweetness still exists.