A review by bookishwendy
The Round House by Louise Erdrich

3.0

The subject matter and setting are compelling, but the book felt too long and unfocused, the pacing flagged too frequently at crucial junctures, and the ending felt a bit like a cop-out. I appreciated the mother's realistic reaction to her horrific rape and near murder, but I wished there had been more moral complexity--characters a designated as either Good or Evil, which drains a certain nuance out of the setup, and the narrator's actions near the end. Speaking of which, was the narrator Joe really a 13-year-old boy? He and his friends read more like sixteen-year-olds to me, but I suppose it's possible for kids to "age" faster growing up almost entirely unsupervised. At any rate, I liked this one enough to want to read more of Erdrich's work, but didn't love it.