The Sentence

by Louise Erdrich

Literary Fiction

Ghost Story

Contemporary

387 Pages

"Erdrich captures the chaos and beauty of 2020 while telling a ghost story that's both funny and profound—this book is pure magic."

Synopsis

In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors. The Sentence asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning. The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written. The novel becomes both a love letter to books and bookstores and a meditation on how literature sustains us through our darkest moments.

Our Take

Louise Erdrich has created a masterpiece that captures the surreal reality of 2020 while delivering one of the most original and moving ghost stories in recent literature. Her ability to blend humor with profound grief, supernatural elements with social commentary, and personal struggles with historical reckoning demonstrates why she remains one of our most essential contemporary writers. What makes this novel extraordinary is Erdrich's skill in using the haunted bookstore as a metaphor for how the past refuses to stay buried, while celebrating the power of books to connect us across all boundaries. Readers who loved The Midnight Library by Matt Haig will appreciate the celebration of books and reading, while fans of Beloved by Toni Morrison will recognize similar explorations of how the past haunts the present. Like Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders, this novel uses supernatural elements to examine profound truths about grief, community, and healing. Erdrich's background as both a novelist and bookstore owner brings authenticity to every detail, making this essential reading for book lovers and anyone seeking to understand how literature helps us navigate crisis. This is a novel that manages to be both timely and timeless, proving that the best ghost stories are ultimately about the living and what we owe each other.