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Title: The Master Butchers Singing Club : A Novel by Louise Erdrich ISBN: 0-06-620977-3 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 04 February, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (35 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: other Wars and other Peaces
Comment: Louise Erdrich's Master Butcher's Singing Club is a Masterpiece of Epic proportion. Tolstoy's epic revolves around Russian life during the Napoleonic Wars. Erdrich's masterpiece spans two continents at the end of WWI through WWII and beyond, with a horrifying flashback to the atrocities at Wounded Knee. Both books are great literature and great stories.
Fidelis Waldvogel, former German boy soldier/sniper in World War I, makes his way across the Atlantic and half way across the North American continent, to Argus, North Dakota, by selling his sausages. He is a Butcher, a Master Butcher, and he Sings. He later recruits Argus townsmen into a Singing Club reminiscent of his Old Home (whose Singing Club we will hear from later.) Delphine Watzka is the daughter of the Argus Town Drunk. These are the central characters around whom the epic swirls.
Erdrich's excellent oeuvre has previously focused on her Native American heritage. This time she expertly interweaves her Native American and German heritages. I listened to the Unabridged Audio of the author Herself performing this masterpiece. It is a true gift to her readers and listeners. Reviewed by TundraVision, Amazon Reviewer.
Rating: 4
Summary: Enjoy this trip to Argus, N.D. --- you won't be disappointed
Comment: It is impossible to escape the past. There are a hundred quiet reminders of this in Louise Erdrich's lyrical new novel, THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB: the weight of the butcher knives that help pay Fidelis's way to America; the stain that cannot be scrubbed out of the bed he shares with his first wife, Eva; the town drunk father of Eva's best friend, Delphine, who cannot stay off the sauce; and the physical scars from World War I on Delphine's friend Cyprian, which don't compare to the emotional ones.
Erdrich's book examines them all and, through her two strong heroines, drives to one conclusion. No matter where you come from, you must always move forward --- you must remember the past without becoming crippled by it. This is certainly a point close to Erdrich's heart. After all, her real-life husband killed himself in the midst of a sexual abuse investigation several years ago. If anyone knows how to impart these lessons, it's this half-German, half-Native American author.
The story chronicles two very different women and their eventual intersection. The German Eva marries the butcher Fidelis after World War I. Fidelis, an expert sniper, was best friends with Eva's fiancé --- killed during the war --- and the two soon embark for a fresh start in America. They settle in Argus, North Dakota, a town well known to Erdrich fans. Meanwhile, we are introduced to Delphine, daughter of the drunken Roy, mother unknown. Delphine returns to town after running away with Cyprian, a mysterious half-French, half-Indian balancer with a sexual identity crisis. She and Cyprian settle into normal Argus life once more --- as normal as life can be after discovering three bodies in your father's cellar and your supposed boyfriend's preference for men.
Eva and Delphine form a deep friendship despite a limited time together; it's not giving anything away to reveal that Eva dies early of cancer. How Delphine deals with her pain and helps her friend's family of four sons and Fidelis survive becomes the focus of the book.
Erdrich tells wonderful stories and sketches intimate pictures of her decidedly non-stock characters. Everyone has a unique identity and unique emotions. All of them, from the town's other butcher to the sheriff to the mortician, are intriguing. It's so rare to encounter a book without a clichéd character --- that's reason enough to love this novel.
But there are other reasons, too. History books can't compare to this picture of early 20th-century life. The book fleshes out the personal aspects of both world wars, the horrors of which are too often obscured by the more recent Vietnam War. The melding of so many new and old world events proves fascinating. And the symbolism of the Master Butchers Singing Club itself will fuel a thousand book group discussions.
The book's one true fault is the lack of palpable tension between the two characters who are supposed to have it --- Fidelis and Delphine. The untapped passion that supposedly exists between them never climbs above lukewarm. Since Erdrich presents everything else so deliberately, perhaps this is more calculated than it comes off; whatever the reason, it doesn't inhibit the storyline.
THE MASTER BUTCHERS SINGING CLUB presents a fully realized world with morally complex characters and very few certainties. Very few trips are as interesting as those to Argus, N.D.
--- Reviewed by Toni Fitzgerald
Rating: 1
Summary: A thoroughly depressing mess of a book.
Comment: According to the title of this book, one would assume the book would be about The Master Butchers Singing Club. However, the singing club is only mentioned a handful of times and none of the members of the club are central characters. The flyleaf synopsis of the book would lead one to believe that the protagonist is Fidelis, the young German army sniper that leaves his country to create a new life in the United States after WWI. The true protagonist is Delphine, a vaudeville performer with serious emotional issues from her sad childhood marked with abandonment and acoholism.
I kept reading hoping that something positive would happen to at least one character in this book, unfortunately the theme is "Life is cruel, Life is hard, don't be honest about your feelings because people will disappoint you and eventually leave you". After so many pages of alcoholic fathers, abandoned children, unrequited love, agonizing death and motherless sons, a blanket of sadness may settle on the reader that is difficult to shake off.
There are plot threads that just end without any real closure, characters that aren't fleshed out enough to make the reader care what happens to them and very disjointed writing. The author glosses over a man returning from war, marrying his best friend's pregnant fiance, falling in love with his new wife and having a child all within a page and a half, however spends an entire paragraph describing the wonder store bought bread brings to the community.
Altogether a sad and badly written book and I won't be reading anything else the author has written.
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Title: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse: A Novel by Louise Erdrich ISBN: 0060931221 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 02 April, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Range Eternal, The by Louise Erdrich ISBN: 0786802200 Publisher: Hyperion Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.99 |
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Title: Three Junes by Julia Glass, Julia Glass ISBN: 0385721420 Publisher: Anchor Pub. Date: 22 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Beet Queen : A Novel by Louise Erdrich ISBN: 0060977507 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country (National Geographic Directions) by Louise Erdrich ISBN: 0792257197 Publisher: National Geographic Pub. Date: 01 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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