The writing is oddly flat, and occasionally inexplicable. Erdrich, as ever, is gifted at pacing the novel has the structure of a successful thriller.īut that's essentially all it has going for it. Cedar is forced to lie low with her parents and with Phil, the father of her unborn child, who warns her, 'They're offering rewards now for anyone who turns in a pregnant neighbor, acquaintance, family member, whatever.'Ĭedar's freedom doesn't last long, and the rest of Future Home of the Living God tells the story of her desperate attempts to escape the hospital in which she's imprisoned. The timing couldn't be worse for Cedar: Babies have started being born with unusual characteristics, and now shadowy government squads are imprisoning pregnant women, hoping to figure out what's causing all the terrifying changes. The Week's Best Stories From NPR Books From Erdrich, A Page Turner With Deceit At Heart She's recently made contact with her birth mother, who lives on a reservation with Cedar's meth-addled half-sister, a character - well, a quasi-plot device - who disappears for much of the novel, only to resurface later for reasons that are unclear. Her adoptive parents are 'Minneapolis liberals' and 'happily married vegans' with a distaste for religion that runs counter to Cedar's recently acquired intellectual brand of Catholicism.

It's not going to tarnish Erdrich's unbelievably accomplished career - it's hard to imagine anything doing that, short of her body-slamming Philip Roth after setting fire to the Library of Congress - but it does demonstrate that even the country's best writers stumble every once in a while.įuture Home of the Living God, apparently set in the near future, follows Cedar Hawk Songmaker, a generically quirky 26-year-old Native American woman living in Minnesota. Erdrich's gift for innovation has paid off in the past, but her latest novel, Future Home of the Living God, is an overreaching, frequently bizarre book that never really comes close to getting off the ground. She's proved herself to be a brilliant writer who can do almost anything. In the following years, she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for The Plague of Doves, and won a National Book Award for The Round House. Her genius was evident early in her career - her 1984 debut novel, Love Medicine, drew considerable critical acclaim and earned her a National Book Critics Circle Award. Louise Erdrich is, without a doubt, one of America's greatest novelists. Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Future Home of the Living God Author Louise Erdrich

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