Reviews - The Mighty Red | The StoryGraph

1.5k reviews for:

The Mighty Red

Louise Erdrich

3.98 AVERAGE

makmarsee's review against another edition

4.5

emotional informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

emmacristina's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

it took me a while to get into this one, especially with the cast of characters being quite large. but it was so worth it!
loved:
-exploring concepts of guardian angels, haunting, spirituality
-the mystery of what happened to the high school football team
-descriptions of farmer love felt very real and grounded in reality, loved the exploration of the effects of pesticides and the impacts of co-op crops
-winnie as the mother-in-law
-crystal and kismet as mother daughter
-character names

less loved:
-martins plotline: I felt like I missed something here or I would have liked a bit more in terms of a resolution
-eric I think also needed a bit more of a resolution

extra notes:
saw lots of reviews calling this book funny and humorous and the tone more lighthearted than usual. my brain might be broken but I didn't find it funny. like some parts were funny but I didn't feel like humour was a huge theme throughout.

do you have a guardian angel, or are you haunted? who survives and who deserves to? why do we make the decisions we do?

this is a love letter to small rural communities and a love letter to silly high schoolers falling in love and doing stupid things!

katerenee's review

5.0

dark emotional funny reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

rabid_faerie's review against another edition

2.5

dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

khegenbart's review against another edition

0.5

slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

yrock007's review against another edition

5.0

hopeful inspiring medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

My heart is full agter readung this beautiful love mystery commentary historical cultural novel. It is many many things and all of them engaging!

hellsworth023's review against another edition

4.25

emotional reflective medium-paced

car_ro_men's review against another edition

4.25

challenging emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

labricoleuse's review

DID NOT FINISH: 26%

I stopped caring about the story

pixie_d's review against another edition

3.25

challenging dark emotional informative tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I had previously read The Sentence. This one also has a bookstore, some violence, a ghost, a kooky white lady, multiple generations of characters. It also has a ton of trauma, such as financial and environmental disasters, and frankly it stressed me out to be out in that headspace in this current, excruciatingly anxious time. The actual character stories didn't quite do it for me. The youngest couple has behaviors that seem more adult and less teen, and people from both generations cross boundaries even to the point of criminality, but the book does not see their choices as morally objectionable. Sorry if this sounds garbled, but I don't want to spoiler anything. Erdrich did a good job of writing about what was going on in the minds and emotions of the characters, and you might enjoy that.

For me, however,

I don't like it when author's basically tell you what to think, and I'm not even talking about the environmental lectures. There is a book club meeting, and what they say about The Road, that the apocalyptic setting is just the scene for the real story about a parent and child, is like suggesting this is how you should see this book you're reading now (a writing trick I always feel manipulated by). Which, leaving aside the way the writer ignored any moral questions of adultery, acts a way of excusing the huge plot gaps. In just a few sentences, Hugo gets married, then jump to years later and he's together again with Kismet (who is not as magical as her name implies, btw). Like this part of the plot didn't need developing because it wasn't about parent/child. Not! Please don't create a vivid character like Hugo then drop him. It really feels like the story wanted to be an old fashioned multi volume saga but the author and or her publishers wanted to skip it and rush to print to keep that production line and income stream moving. This is not the first book I've read this year that felt that way, so do not think I'm pointing at Erdrich in particular. I think that when a book is being written, like any art work it starts to show you its shape, and as a creator you need to work with, not against that. Turning it into a product for a business does not allow the work to develop to its full potential. If you like how Louise is able to get into her characters' minds and hearts, and can stomach the trauma, I'm sure you wouldn't mind hanging out with them longer. Personally I did not like the Crystal/Martin arc, but the nice thing about sagas (or soap operas) is there are enough characters and stories to go around, so you don't have to like the same ones your neighbor likes. This book could have benefited from not skipping over too much at the end. This type of writing should be a marathon, not a sprint.

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