Reviews with content warning for Hate crime - The Round House

Reviews tagging 'Hate crime'

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

22 reviews

yourbookishbff's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This is my first by Louise Erdrich, and I know I'll read more. As beautifully written as it is devastating, this premise is dark - a mother is brutally raped and nearly murdered, escaping - just barely - with her life at the very start of our story. With the discovery of the crime, the lives of every person in her orbit shift radically. This is written in first-person through the perspective of her thirteen-year-old son, Joe, and you can feel in every scene how he teeters between childhood and adulthood, at times falling into silly Star Trek games and juvenile inside jokes with his best friends, and at others, resenting his parents for the fall-out from the crime as he tries to unravel the mystery himself. Joe's fears, anxieties, resentment, curiosity, and growing self-awareness are deeply painful to read as an adult, as we see the aging effect of childhood trauma and the ripples of the crime in every part of his life.

Joe's personal liminality is reflected in Erdrich's depiction of life on the reservation. We take long detours through Catholicism and the local church and see the ways in which colonizing religions have influenced various people and families in their tribe, and we sense the disharmony of these traditions and their own. In the end, as Joe journeys toward revenge, he finds himself seeking reassurance and validation in both Catholic and Ojibwe tradition, alternately leaning on stories of Sins Crying out for Vengeance and the wiindigoo. Erdrich sets the crime itself in just such a liminal space - occurring, in part, within the Round House, a sacred space for the Ojibwe, but occurring in part at an intersection of tribal and "fee" lands. This liminality becomes the crux of the injustice in our story, and Erdrich shows us how the very real lack of sovereignty for Indigenous communities undermines their ability to protect themselves and their lands, and how it has specifically betrayed Indigenous victims of sexual violence.

There is so much that can be said about how Erdrich builds the narrative - the lack of quotation marks that give it a stream of consciousness feel at times, the storytelling woven throughout, the anecdotal detours, the wide cast of characters and the decision to confine the story to Joe's point of view. Altogether, these decisions create a world haunted by many ghosts, one in which we can see the ripples of action and inaction across people and generations, and one in which justice feels illusory.

Content Warnings

anna_hepworth's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This is a very difficult story to read --mostly because it deals with some awful things, but also because a) I found the viewpoint character, a 13 year old boy, very difficult to stay engaged with and b) there are lots of layers of what is going on, all the time, and I struggled to keep track.

Well worth having stuck through having to borrow it from the library four times, each time having to wait through the hold queue!

Content Warnings

library_anne's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional informative sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

pettywhaler's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional funny informative reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

audreyolejasz's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense slow-paced

2.0

The main character is kunda of a pervert...

Content Warnings

se_palmer's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark funny sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

This is a rough story told beautifully. Without spoiling anything, this is the story of a violent crime and a community's response, specifically the response of a 13 year old boy. There are moments that are harrowing and heartbreaking, and there are moments of deep humor and joy, and the teenage perspective tends to walk the line between normal teenage weirdness and the truly awkward and upsetting. The story asks us to think about what justice means to victims, to their families and communities, and traditionally, and the answers it presents are sometimes challenging.
The story ends abruptly and without the normal feeling of resolution, so if that kind of thing makes you mad, consider yourself forewarned.

Content Warnings