A review by speculativebecky
The Round House by Louise Erdrich

4.0

This is a profoundly heavy book, about a thirteen year old boy dealing with the aftermath of the violent rape and attempted murder of his mother. I’m glad I was able to take my time reading this one, and appreciate the privilege to step away from the difficult content when I needed to. Erdirch’s prose here is (as always) crisp and luxurious, and the North Dakota reservation setting felt clear as day around me. Young male protagonists toppling over the edge of puberty and into adulthood aren’t my favorite subjects, and this focus lent the book some awkward moments, like our protagonist’s fixation on his aunt’s breasts which I could not deal with. This lens from Erdrich was such an interesting choice to me, focusing on the devastating real issue of violence against Indigenous women from the viewpoint of the rippling effect on the men and boys in their lives. (Erdrich writes in the afterword that more than 1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime, and that 86% of rapes and sexual assaults against them are perpetrated by non-Native men.) Even with this framing and the way that the protagonist, through his youth and inexperience, misses some of what is going on, his mother never feels like a caricature. Though the book wasn’t fully about her, she was the center of the story for me.⁣ This book asks big questions about how we move on from violence and horror and betrayal, and I know I'll be sitting with it for quite some time.
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Cw for rape, violence, domestic abuse, murder, death