The Antelope Wife by
Louise Erdrich

Nominated by:

The Antelope Wife extends the branches of the families who populate Louise Erdrich's earlier novels, and once again, her unsentimental, unsparing writing captures the Native American sense of despair, magic and humor. Rooted in myth and set in contemporary Minneapolis, this poetic and haunting story spans a century, at the center of which is a mysterious and graceful woman known as the Antelope Wife. Elusive, silent, and bearing a mystical link to nature, she embodies a complicated quest for love and survival that impacts lives in unpredictable ways. Her tale is an unforgettable tapestry of ancestry, fate, harrowing tragedy, and redemption, that seems at once modern and eternal.
Louise Erdrich lives with her children in the midwest amd is a mixed-blood member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwa. Her books include The Beet Queen, Love Medicine, Tracks, The Bingo Palace, nominated for the 1996 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and Tales of Burning Love.

Here's what the members of the Reading Group based at our Raheny branch library think of The Antelope Wife:

The Antelope Wife captures the Native American sense of despair, magic and humour" according to the blurb on the back cover of the paperback edition. My knowledge of the present-day culture of Native Americans is extremely limited so I was happy to discover more through this fascinating novel. It's style reminded me of South American novelists of the last twenty years which mingles myth, magic and reality, but I did feel thwarted not being able to refer to a family tree which describes the relationships between various characters. However I derived great pleasure from the differing perspectives Erdrich reveals through the eyes of the protagonists and the humour as well as suffering they experienced. Having read The Antelope Wife, I do feel I understand more about the culture Erdrich describes so affectionately but the haphazard nature of the stories would not appeal to everyone, despite the beauty of the writing.
(Member of Raheny Library Reading Group)