Shadow Tag: A Novel (P.S.)

By Louise ErdrichHarper Perennial 272 pgs978-0061536106Rating: 4This book is excruciating. Also spellbinding. You will be appalled by the mind games being played but you will also come to understand them. At first you won't believe that you would ever play these games. But then you will begin to reflect and wonder if you haven't played some of these games yourself. I enjoyed this book greatly. It is a pleasure to read. Just be forewarned.Irene and Gil are married and have 3 children. Gil is a successful artist and Irene is supposed to be working on her thesis. Irene has been keeping a journal since their first child was born. There are many of these red bound journals. She has recently discovered that Gil is reading her journal so she has bought another journal, a blue one, and it is the real journal. She has gone so far as to rent a safe deposit box for this blue journal. So far so good but Irene keeps writing in the red journal. She is writing for Gil.Gil is an almost completely unsympathetic character. He never exhibits any kindness that is not corrupted by self. He so desperately needs to keep this family of his together that he is moved to ever more inspired heights of cruelty. The majority of Gil's work are portraits of Irene in many poses, all graphic images of different stages of body and life. His portraits are an attempt to maintain control over Irene. Almost as if the old Native American belief that a picture takes some of your soul is true. Gil takes pieces of Irene's soul.Irene seems a much more sympathetic character. But then you realize that you may have made a mistake. There are deep, very dark currents at work in this marriage. Irene begins to resent the portraits Gil has painted of her over the years. She begins to feel those pieces of her soul as they go missing. In big ragged chunks. So since Irene has discovered Gil's disrespect and invasion of her privacy she begins writing fiction for Gil to read.This is how the plot spins out of control for everyone. As Gil and Irene each struggle for control of the other they take no prisoners. Shadow Tag is sort of a thriller and the tension builds and builds. The twist at the end shocks. And then again it doesn't. You saw this coming even if you didn't. And it tells you all you needed to know about Gil and Irene.Please visit Louise Erdrich's book store: [...]*Note that many people believe this book has autobiographical elements. You can take a look at this short bio of Ms. Erdrich's former husband Michael Dorris and make up your own mind:[...]

This was the first Louise Erdrich book I have read and to be honest I came to it after seeing that it was named one of the NY Times Notable Books of 2010. I can totally understand why as it was one of the best books I have read this year. Erdrich is able to spin a tale that is sad and touching. A story that really takes you down into the nitty gritty details of a Native American family living in the cold climate of northern Minnesota who struggles to live and love. Irene--the wife--has kept a diary where she talks about how she wants to get out of her marriage to her husband Gil--a famous painter. Irene is the subject of all of Gil's paintings and finds out that Gil has been reading her diary. So she starts a new "Red" diary where she plants stories to lead Gil on towards hopefully choosing to leave her rather than her having to leave him. There are so many stories though woven into this one book. The relationship not just of husband and wife but also of father and kids, mother and kids, man to his work, kids growing up with each other, and a woman who can't quite find something to get her going every day and is "stuck" in life. I highly recommend this story and will plan to read more of her works in the future.

Singer-songwriter Kristin Hersh observes in her "Your Dirty Answer" that "I don't judge people. I just watch them till it's time to look away."And when you explore Louise Erdrich's apparently semi-autobiographical novel "Shadow Tag," maybe you'll want to avert your gaze, but you probably won't be able to. Her prose is faultless; the story is gripping. The author sets the tale in familiar territory--Minnesota--and populates it as usual with Native Americans (she herself is Ojibwe). But this time out her antagonists, Irene and Gil, could just as easily have been outer-borough New York Ethnics, or Connecticut WASPs.Anyway, the marriage of these two deeply damaged and rather despicable people spirals apart before your eyes, while their three children and two dogs try to cope.Shifting back and forth between first-person narrative for the sections in the false red diary and true blue notebook, and third-person narrative for the bulk of the tale (the writer of which isn't revealed until the end--although maybe you'll have figured out who that is by then), Ms. Erdrich provides painful thrills. There's not a word out of place.The true blue notebook seldom appears in the narrative, and its only purpose seems to be to set up the finale. And maybe there was a better way to achieve this. But the suggestion here is to simply deal with what is before you. And that devastates.'

A good writer, a clever writer, but a little too self-indulgently and self-consciously clever. All such reviews are necessarily subjective, and my response may be more of a tribute than a serious criticism, but I cannot understand why anyone would wish to read anything which wallows to such an extent in dysfunction, debasement, and betrayal with absolutely no sympathetic characters, and no discernible suggestion of redemption.I would have abandoned it within a few chapters had it not been required reading for a Book Club, and I did not change my mind thereafter. The Book Club was divided in its opinion!

Mesmerising words and an original way of using them are what makes everything Louise Erdrich writes special, be warned she's addictive!

I have been a fan of Louise Erdrich's work since reading 'Tracks' shortly after it was published many years ago. Given the subject matter of this book I felt somewhat cautious about it as it seemed such a departure from her usual territory so to speak.Some reviewers of her other books have described how her prose is so intense at times that you cannot read too much of it at one sitting. I readily agree and find myself in the same category of readers. I was surprised therefore when I got through this book far more quickly than I usually do with her books. But that is not meant in any way as a criticism. The writing is of a much different kind I think in this book. The emotional intensity of the story propels you through the book. It's almost as if there is a voyeuristic quality to it at times and you feel as though this is subject matter far too personal to be 'let in on'. You are left in no doubt by the end of it that, at the very least, some of the events portrayed have to be autobiographical. Neither the husband or wife emerges from this story with much dignity as they are both burdened with top-end character flaws. The damage they inflict on each other is multi-faceted and unrelenting at times. At no point did I feel that my sympathies lay with one or the other of them. But for all that, at a very deep level their love for each other manages to shine through but never actually saves them.Erdrich also manages to clearly show the effects of domestic abuse on the children involved and she does this in a very simple an un-dramatic way. There is a very moving scene about a third of the way into the book where she describes how the children react when they hear their parents fighting. The description is very very simply done but intensely powerful at the same time.So, if you are an Erdrich fan buy this book and don't worry about the fact that she is heading into different territory. The subject matter may be different but there is no diminution in the quality of her writing. Very highly recommended

<3 this book.

I haven't been readining Louise Erdrich now for several years. So, when I took on Shadow Tag, I was extremely surprised. The work is short, deeply philosophical, unbearably moving, and very, very sad. It is about how hard it is to be a human, to quote little Stoney from the book.An elegant book about love, jealousy, and the impossibility of separation or having the ability to forget, forgive and start again.Life is too short, and if we spent most of it in a belief that everything is somehow all right, it would be too tiring to realize that each moment matters, the happy end is not guaranteed and one must never stop trying.Also it is a book about parenthood, children and the human haeart.That the heroes are Native Americans is just by the way.