The Sentence

By: Louise Erdrich

Narrated by: Louise Erdrich

Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors.

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention", must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Louise Erdrich (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

Enraptured

I couldn’t put this book down. I was breathless with laughter or fear so many times during the reading. What a year, what a novel!

My first Louise Erdrich...how could I have waited

Powerful personal story of the first year of the pandemic. Be prepared to be deeply moved.

Maybe this is how all Ms. Erdrich books are. I am just glad to have chosen this one.

Beautiful book

This is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. The story captures so eloquently that first year of the pandemic, the language is so poetic, and Louise’s voice itself feels like a poem. This is one book that I’m glad I listened to rather than reading on the page.

Extraordinary and beautiful story for our moment

I am overcome. Thank you Louise Ehrdrich, and all wisdomkeepers, caretakers, essential humans, friends and guides lighting a way through these times.

Another Masterpiece

Ms Erdrich voice is soothing. The story is captivating and perfectly timed forCobid times.
Another wonderful tale of an American tragedy in time.

One of Her Most Beautifully Realized Works

The plotting and characterization are some of Erdrlch's very best. As with all of her best novels, we learn far more than we ever believed possible about America's indigenous people and their role in remote and recent history. A ghost story set in the author's legendary book shop filled with flesh and blood characters that make us weep and rejoice. Erdrich's performance of this fast-paced narrative is superb.

Erdrich at Her best!

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Louise Erdrich read The Sentence, a complex tale of the lives of a number of characters in the time of COVID and the chaos of community dissent in Minneapolis. It’s about love and ghosts and connections between and among people who have historically suffered in the hands of others. Strong, livable characters. I had to keep driving in order to finish it!

This book got me reading again after my Covid ennui!

Beautiful writing, strong characters who made me weep with recognition of life’s struggles and triumphs. I am recommending to my grandchildren, my friends, to all. My husband told me I’d like this author and was he ever right!

Read this. Listen, if you can.

One of the best books I've read in a while. Highly recommend. It is grounded and beautiful and will shake you up as you laugh and cry.

What does it mean to be haunted.

E.B. White offered the following advice to would be authors: “Don’t write about Man, write about a man”. In following this advice, Louise Erdrich creates an achingly beautiful account of the pandemic year from the perspective of a woman haunted by her past, her ancestry, the world at large and by an annoying ghost that is seeking gratitude or absolution or both. There are a multitude of moving passages in this novel, including one description of the process of straightening sacred eagle feathers and comparing this meticulously performed task to the redemptive power of true love. Erdrich’s prose has a quiet, stealthy quality that surprises the reader and draws them in. Her overall message to embrace our authentic self and our humanity is a triumph over fever dream that was 2020.