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Worlds Without End Blog

WoGF Review: The Antelope Wife by Louise Erdrich Posted at 8:10 AM by Star Hall

Stella Atrium

WWEnd Women of Genre Fiction Reading ChallengeStar Hall (Stella Atrium) is a devoted reader and author of science fiction and fantasy. She writes: “I believe that reading and writing go hand-in hand. Each day I can learn from my characters and provide a big stage for them because I filled the creative coffers with good images from great stories.” Visit her website http://stellaatrium.com for more information.


The Antelope WifeLouise Erdrich has written a series of novels about a Native American extended family trapped in poverty and fear on the reservation and in Minneapolis (called Apple Town due to the vowel sounds). In The Antelope Wife, revolving narrators bead together the events apparently to bind patterns over generations – fates of twins, lost babies, lustful wives. Since the level of diction of each narrator is identical with lazy grammar, interjected native words, and self-centered vision, the use of he-she-they gets confusing for relations among the cousins.

My reading of The Antelope Wife was different from other reviewers who took the first narrator in chapter one as the center. I found the central character to be Cally who struggles to find meaning in the advice, myths, strange gestures, broken dreams of her parents-stepfather-cousin-grandmas-ancestors. The details Erdrich presents of their disassociated lives are unsparing and often funny. For example, Cally wonders about the choices of a cousin who pre-salts her food since salting before tasting is an indication of general dissatisfaction with life.

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WoGF Review: The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold Posted at 2:29 PM by Star Hall

Stella Atrium

WWEnd Women of Genre Fiction Reading ChallengeStar Hall (Stella Atrium) is a devoted reader and author of science fiction and fantasy. She writes: “I believe that reading and writing go hand-in hand. Each day I can learn from my characters and provide a big stage for them because I filled the creative coffers with good images from great stories.” Visit her website http://stellaatrium.com for more information.


The Lovely BonesThe Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold was published in 2002 and a Peter Jackson movie followed, so I’m not giving away secrets when I reveal that the narrator is a dead girl. This review includes specific plot details, though, so **spoiler alert**.

The story is about how family members work through grief and a little about cosmic justice. If the reader recently lost a loved one, this account may be heartrending.

Sebold managed multiple perspectives in each scene since the narrator spies from heaven and tells the story through the eyes of a suburban schoolgirl. The creative use of verb tense and simple sentence structure reinforces the deep but flat POV. Aspiring writers can take a lesson here about how to integrate “double voiced” sentences (see: Mikhail Bakhtin).

After she is murdered, Susie exists in “my own heaven” and frequently views family members, school chums, and the man who murdered her. For the first hundred pages, Sebold restricts the narration to the perspective of a 14-year-old girl who discovers secrets her parents hold dear and also how the world works. For example, she follows the rabbit that carries poison in the garden back to the burrow where the whole family dies.

Susie can spy on individual members of the family and school friends. Later she seems to view the whole town during a specific event (the escape of her murderer) for what each person is doing at that moment.

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