Off The Shelf

Review:

Usually about halfway through reading a “shelf” book, I figure out what I’m going to write about. Comes to me in a flash, a bolt, an inspiration. Often just a general notion, but until now there has always been a something. With this book I got nothing. Some little glimmers perhaps, but nothing useful or blog-worthy. Instead, here were the train cars of my thoughts as I chugged along:

• “Giving insane All Fours vibes.”
• “Only a quarter of the way through, and this story is resolving. What more could happen?”
• “Oh, that was only the Backstory!”
• “I am not this book’s target audience.”
• “I get that reference!”
• “Oh no, this is set in 2020!?!”
• “What did Minneapolis do to get all the crap it’s been through these last several years?”
• “Neatly wrapped up.”

If I was making a conspiracy theorist’s bulletin board of index cards and string connecting all the books I’ve been reading — seriously considering trying to build one! — this book would be doing a lot of work for me. Tookie mentions many fancy-pants books that I have/will read, including Sula and The Known World — maybe even Proust, if I can hack it — coming up in this blog. That’s the ego-inflating part. Less self-aggrandizing are all the hoi polloi books it reminds me of. It’s set at least partly in 2020 like the aptly named romcom Romantic Comedy — a book I enjoyed but could hardly reflect a more different pandemic experience. Erdrich self-inserts with gentle self-awareness (“She kept sending out emails that were supposed to buck up our spirits but did the opposite.”) that feels so much less cringey than Dave Eggers’ attempt in Monk of Mokha — the book I didn’t want to talk about in my last post. And of course the bookstore setting connects to Storybook Ending, the breakout novel of Seattle Times columnist Moira MacDonald. I wanted to love that book, but could not get past the first few chapters despite the bookstore allure and hometown pandering. Too many sad sack characters and a plot built entirely on a middle-school-level note-passing mishap.

That’s all fine and well, but you might ask, “My Dear Blogger, are you going to write anything insightful or interesting about THIS book?” To that I say: No, I don’t think so. Going back to my fourth boxcar thought of “I am not this book’s target audience,” I’m definitely not feeling on solid ground about weighing in here. Did this book speak to me personally? No. Was it trying to? Probably not. Is it feeling self-satisfied that a lot of this went over my head and under my radar? It should.

Topics I’m not touching with a ten-foot pole:

• Absolutely anything about Indigenous peoples: experience, history, practices, beliefs, etc.
• What Minneapolis has gone through this decade
• Ghosts
• Louise Erdrich as a person

Fair game:

• Other books
• Literary devices
• A general agreement about how much 2020 sucked
• Louise as a character (“Age had broadened her face and nose, plumped up her cheeks, grayed her hair, and given her an air of general tolerance.”)

Also, my last post was so long I didn’t want you to think that every post of mine was going to be a tome! (Finished reading the book May 15, 2026)

Payoff (pages I read per stars I gave): 374/3 = 124 2/3

(check out my latest update to the graphic organizer page that tries to put these into context)