Customer Reviews

The Master Butchers Singing Club (P.S.)

5 star:		(60)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

No Spoilers Present For those who haven't read the novel:

Finished The Master Butchers Singing Club 5+ by Louise Erdrich and it bowled me over, promising to be my favorite selection for the year in any genre. Just such a fine reading experience! Once in a while, a book just commands one's attention and is completely gratifying.

I read every word on each page very slowly to savor the language, characters and plot. Drawn in from the onset, the readers' involvement continues to increase at a breakneck pace, even though we slow down to enjoy the nearly perfect prose and comprehend the mental set and daily lives and tasks of our characters between the lines, and their places in the community. Although not 100 percent linear, and episodic in nature, there is no confusion at all for the reader, who is torn between knowing more 'later' or enjoying the 'now'.

The novel is about a young German butcher, Fidelis, who emigrates to the USA after serving in WWI, carrying only a suitcase full of sausages and a perfect set of carving knives. He ends up in Argus, North Dakota, where he establishes his business. The dynamic of Argus itself becomes a character. The book covers only three decades, but feels like an awesomely enduring saga of the complexities of life, over time. In addition to Fidelis... Delphine (it remains her story), Cyprian, Clarissa, Roy, and especially Eva and her boys are characters who remain embedded in the on-deck circle, and each is integral to the fabric of the novel. The Master Butchers Singing Club also incorporates mayhem, madness, murder, and intrigue. I have few words to convey the depth of my experience while reading this novel, so what follows is an excerpt from the book jacket:

>>TMBSC unfolds its themes of love and death, lightness and gravity...with the eloquent prose, sly humor, and depth of feeling that only a masterful writer can offer. Creating a fictional world filled with memorable characters who grapple with the worst and best impulses of human nature is an impressive achievement, but doing so with the compassion and intelligence, lyrical style and wit, of Louise Erdrich is a gift to readers everywhere.<<

Oh yes, Oh yes!

Roe

The Master Butchers Singing Club is not much about master butchers or really about their singing, but rather uses this title as a taking off point to tell a story about transplanted people living in the northern midwest of America.
Fidelis, a German, emigrating to America between the two world wars works so hard to keep his family afloat, that he does not have the time or energy to reflect or even interact upon his wife and sons. They do their jobs with him, but his inner life is all but invisible.
Delphine, on the other hand, who befriends Fidelis' wife, Eva...cares for her as she is dying...and later marries Fidelis herself, has a strong inner life. She worries about Fidelis' boys as each of them experiences life's trials, she agonizes about her own father, Roy, the town drunk, drifts in and finally out of a loveless relationship with Cyprian, a circus performer who has taught her balance ( a metaphor for her being able to deal with her future problems), and works her way through additional relationships with her best friend, Clarisse and with Mazarine, who is in love with one of Fidelis' sons.
This inner life/outer life differential between the two main characters is explored in poetic detail by Loiuse Erdrich in this very fine novel.
Bring your patience when your read this book...it is sometime languid and wordy...but it is well worth the effort.
It is beautifully written and it explores an important part of
of our country which is rarely presented.

As soon as I finished this book, I started over on the first page to scan through the story and stopped to re-read sections to fully savor the connections and events over again.

Delphine is a character I will remember for a long time. She is a true survivor, "No matter what they might have heard at the lumberyard, she wanted to give the impression of an extremely respectable woman, but not one who could not afford, say, a hat with a little green feather. A plain person. Trustworthy. Not a person who had a murderer for a best friend or who'd lived with a vaudeville acrobat or who had a gabby old souse for a father. Delphine, she wanted people to say of her, she's awfully quick, but she's solid and reliable."

The account of Eva and Delphine in the night garden drinking beer while they set the beer out to catch slugs is tender and funny and so full of life and death that it alone makes the book a treasure to read.

I checked this book out of the library but I am going to order it. I want to keep these characters around, not return them.

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

For her eighth novel, Erdrich stays within the confines of her fictional North Dakota town of Argus, but she focuses less on its Native American denizens than on its German immigrant population. As with her previous efforts, however, it's still a personal odyssey; as she notes in her acknowledgments, the inspiration for the novel is her grandfather (pictured on the jacket of the hardcover edition), who "fought in the trenches of the German side of World War I" before emigrating to the United States, and whose "sons served on the American side in World War II."

With the change in focus comes an appropriate change in pitch: there's far less magic realism and far more European naturalism. At times, the events and characters of "The Master Butchers Singing Club" resemble those from an offbeat soap opera, but Erdrich is far too deft a writer to let melodrama get the better of her storytelling. Beyond the occasional similarity to Lynch's Twin Peaks and the Coen brothers' Fargo, the more obvious influences are the prairie towns imagined by Sinclair Lewis and Willa Cather.

The character modeled after her grandfather, Fidelis Waldvogel, arrives from Europe with his wife and a suitcase filled with sausage, which proves to be his currency to reach the Eden he imagines to be found in the Pacific Northwest. The money earned from sales of the meat, however, gets him only as far as the godforsaken desert of North Dakota, where he eventually becomes a much-admired shopkeeper and a stalwart member of the community. On the outskirts of the town lives the novel's heroine, Delphine Watzka, who has returned to her father's home from life on the road in a vaudeville show with her alleged husband, who (it is soon revealed) lives a double life. Eventually, the paths of these two dissimilar and distinctive families cross in momentous and bizarre ways

The novel contains enough twists and mysteries to keep the pages turning: there's a triple killing uncovered upon Delphine's return, which is all the more inexplicable because the chief witness, her father, was too drunk to remember what happened; a terrifying tunnel collapse; an eccentric bag lady known as Step-and-a-Half, who has a couple of secrets all her own; and more. While each episode and revelation ranges from the farcical to the grisly, Erdrich mitigates the potential for Dickensian excess by subtly examining the effects of these events (some of which occur offstage) on her characters and on the community. And, although her work has always been infused with a comic edge, Erdrich displays a mordant (yet not unkind) wit here that differs from the tone of her earlier work.

Above all, Erdrich has written a celebratory and emotional ode to the "other" side of her family, whose fortitude and charisma she clearly admires (and it's not hard to see why). Although she reassures us that "the book is fiction except for snout salad, the bull's pizzle, and my grandmother's short stint as a human table in a vaudeville act," the reverence and the affection are as raw as the North Dakota wind.

Louise Erdich's latest novel has some wonderful characters, each one with his or her own horrific memories. I found myself feeling all their emotional upheavals as they played out their lives in a small town in North Dakota beginning in the 1920s. The sense of place is wonderful. But it's the people who are unforgettable.

There's Fidelis Waldvogel, a German butcher who has seen death and disaster in WW1. And there's Eva, his wife, and their four sons. There's Delphine, who we first meet doing a vaudeville act with Cyprian, a good looking man who can never me more than a platonic friend. There's Roy Watzka, Delphine's father, the town drunk. And Delphine's friend Clarisse the town undertaker. And then there is the mysterious woman who roams the streets collecting junk.

They all have stories, and all have secrets. And as their stories unravel I found myself drawn right into their little town with its rhythms and realities and disasters. Their lives certainly aren't simple. There's mystery and murder and natural disasters. And just plain human weakness. Time passes, the children grow. WW2 looms. The stories grow more complex. Always they are fascinating and I found it hard to put the book down. The author's descriptions of people and places are rich and dramatic. She's a wonderful writer.

Some of the parts towards the end dragged. Also, like life itself, not all of the threads of stories were ever completed. Some questions raised went answered. But then there was a surprise last chapter, which pulled a lot of the mystery together. In spite of its few weakness, however, I loved the book and couldn't stop reading it.

It may be hard to understand why I gave this book 5 stars when I explain that it firmly reinforces my suspicions that life is full of pain, and in the end, is inexorably futile. However, I give the stars for the wonderous telling of Erdrich's story, and I never could for a disingenuously cheerful message.

Erdrich creates a wonderful cast of characters. Each is multi-dimensional and excruciatingly authentic. Similarly, she creates a world that is seamless and genuine. The thing that gives this book a rare "something extra," is the way that she captures the inner lives of the people. She turns them inside out and exposes their complex lives in an immediate way. We feel how their humanity, their struggle, and their foibles interplay to create intricate relationships and lead to unpredictable - often unwelcome - outcomes.

This book can be described as a family saga, a character study, and a bit of a mystery. It also illuminates some European and American history from the end of WWI through the end of WWII. Most importantly, Erdrich beautifully spins a tale of real people that is overtly compelling and sublimely tender.

This book has no flaws worth mentioning. I highly recommend it to anyone who loves excellent writing and great characters.

It's a complete cliche to say that a book sticks with you long after you've turned the last page, but that is precisely the impact that the The Master Butchers Singing Club has had upon me. Delphine and Fidelis (the singing butcher of the title) are two of the most idiosyncratic and memorable characters I've ever encountered in fiction. Louise Erdrich depicts the entire spectrum of emotion in two essentially stoic people and simply breaks your heart.

In the hard scrabble life desribed in this novel, a man shoots a pack of wild dogs to show his love for his sons and grief for his dead wife. The town drunk shows a lethal pettiness and then pulls himself together to sing songs of comfort to a dying woman. It is the moral complexity of these people that sticks with you for days. Some reviewers have complained that characters come into the novel and then disappear, but that is part of the novel's point. The book is the story of Delphine's life. Just as in any life, people come into her world and then move on. Her life feels more real, and less like fiction, because some loose ends are left to dangle. Not every character has an ultimate resolution.

I can't recommend this book highly enough.

This novel is a departure for Louise Erdrich in that The Master Butchers Singing Club focuses on the German side of her heritage and only deals with Native American characters on the periphery. Erdrich has been my favorite author ever since I read Love Medicine while in college. Her newest novel does not disappoint at all.

The novel follows two people, Fidelis and Delphine. We first meet Fidelis shortly after World War I. He is a German and is going home to meet the fiancé of his best friend in the war. He marries Eva and they move to America and end up living in Argus, North Dakota. He works first in Pete Kozka's butcher shop (we meet Pete in her earlier novel The Beet Queen ), and later opens his own shop. Delphine is a native of Argus and is living with an Indian named Cyprian Lazarre (a family well know in Erdrich's work for dishonesty), who happens to be a homosexual. The paths of Fidelis and Delphine cross and their lives become intertwined in several different ways.

Erdrich's gifts as a storyteller only seem to be getting stronger as she continues to write novels. This is an excellent novel. She is a master storyteller. While few novels will match up to The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse , this is a first rate novel and is essential reading for anyone who enjoys reading Erdrich or excellent novels.

The story in The Master Butchers Singing Club by Louise Erdrich came as a total surprise. From the title and the synopsis on the back cover, you're led to believe this is the story of Fidelis Waldvogel, the Master Butcher, his life, work and (obviously) his singing club. Instead, it's so much more.
The story begins at the end of WWI when Fidelis walks home from his service as a German sniper. The beginning of the story is told quickly and has the characteristics of a mythological quest: Fidelis returns from the war, marries his dead friend's pregnant fiancée (Eva) and sets off for America in search of the perfect loaf of white bread, which to him symbolizes America's promise and his future. His talismans are his knives and the sausages he sells to pay his way, and which get him as far as North Dakota. All this takes place in a whirlwind of less than twenty pages, and then you settle in for the rest of the book, which revolves partly around Fidelis, but mostly around Delphine, the daughter of the town drunk who returns home to visit her father and stays to take care of him and deal with the three dead bodies she finds in his cellar. Thus is an indication of the range of this book. It covers the human experience from the routine to the improbable. The subplots the author introduces help drive the book forward and flesh out the characters.
I thought Louise Erdrich did a wonderful job of representing life as it is in reality, not sugar-coated. There is unhappiness, compromise and suffering (both mental and physical), but there are also joyful moments. So many novels are published to appeal to the happily-ever-after crowd who would, perhaps, be dissatisfied that there was no easy answer or guaranteed happy ending. Even though everything doesn't always work out "right" in this book, I wasn't dissatisfied. It reminds us that life isn't perfect, nor is it easy, but amid sadness and tragedy, routine and drudgery, there are also moments of deep satisfaction and sweetness. I highly recommend this book.