The Sentence is a fine enough book in it's own right but I'd like to discuss marketing and expectations. About a third of the way through the book, modern day events take over the narrative and I was in no mood for it. Living in this pandemic consumed world for the last few years, I'm happy when any form of escapism takes my mind off of it for a while. I read this book for our book club, I even voted for it. Why? Because of the way the premise is pitched. An ex con ends up working at a haunted book store? Sign me up! (I'm simplifying a little, but still)

At the start of the book, I was pretty into it. The setup involving Tookie and an unfortunate corpse is funny and gets things off on the right foot. Her relationship with Pollux is heartfelt and sweet. The relationship with Hetta is also interesting. Then the real world creeps in. COVID, Trump, George Floyd. These are all important events that really happened, but that isn't what I wanted from my fiction novel. I wanted escapism. Also, incorporating real world events into a novel pretty much always dates the books and makes them feel a little bit lazy. My hunch is that Louise Erdrich had a pretty good ghost story going and then the pandemic happened and she incorporated it into the writing. It's too bad, because I liked the exploration of Ojibwe spirituality when it happened.

I liked that this book vastly expanded my "To Read" list here on Goodreads. It's apparent that the author is a consummate reader, and I was glad to encounter references to some novels that we had both read. At the end of the day, I might even recommend this to people, with the foreknowledge that the pandemic highjacks the narrative, and doesn't really give it back until the very end of the book. Who knows? Maybe if I read this two years from now, I would have been more okay with the real world in my book. Right now, there is enough of the real world in the real world, thank you very much. Just give me a ghost in a bookstore please.