Tales of Burning Love Pb [Paperback]

Louise Erdrich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 1997

Stuck in a snow storm in a car en route home from his funeral are several wives and one daughter of Jack Mauser - local constuction magnate gone broke. In order to keep each other awake (and thus hopefully alive), they recount their histories with the larger-than-life man they all loved.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Some of the excitement that greeted Erdrich's first book, Love Medicine, will be rekindled with the publication of her captivating fifth novel. While building on the strengths for which she is noted (she again portrays several Native American families whose interconnected life stories coalesce into a unified narrative), Erdrich here broadens her range and ambitions. She constructs this book with a more conventional novelistic form and sets most of it outside the reservation. A robust richness of both plot and character, and an irresistible fusion of tension, mystery and dramatic momentum, add up to powerful, magical storytelling. Two epochal, whiteout North Dakota blizzards 23 years apart define the major events of Jack Mauser's life. During the first, in 1972, his young Chipewa wife, whom he has just married after a few hours acquaintance during a drunken binge, leave his car to perish in the cold (an event foreshadowed in The Bingo Palace). During the second, in 1995, Jack's succeeding wives, all four of them, are trapped overnight in Jack's van, having come together for his funeral. In this quartet of personalities, Erdrich creates a gallery of indelible portraits, each of them distinct, vivid and human in their frailties. What they have in common, their love for charming, preening, self-destructive Jack, is their means of survival through the frigid night. Each woman tells her tale-always full of passion, but often farcical, too-of how Jack wooed, wed, frustrated, drove to distraction, liberated and deserted her. These stories provide both catharsis and insight, allowing each to understand how she in turn contributed to Jack's destruction. And the dialogue, especially the bickering among claustrophobically confined women, is pungent and smart. Erdrich reveals here a new talent for unexpected plot twists and cliff-hanger chapter endings, some funny, some melodramatic. If there are a few too many coincidences (Jack, who is presumed dead but is not, reluctantly kidnaps his own infant son, who in turn is kidnapped by Jack's fifth wife's ex-husband, also presumed dead), it all seems quite plausible in the context of Erdrich's adroit manipulation of interlocking plot strands. Her eye for sensual detail is impeccable, whether it is the evocation of the landscape and weather of the North Dakota plains or the many erotic couplings that Jack's wives, and Jack himself, remember. Jack, too, is a triumph; he's a real scamp and philanderer with other deplorable character traits, but Erdrich limns him with tolerant humor and compassion. Erdrich has definitely gone commercial here, and some readers may miss the ethereal, mystical qualities of her early work. But like several characters who are psychologically or almost literally reborn, reinspired and reset on life's path, Erdrich has granted her literary reputation refreshing new potency. 100,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; author tour; first serial to Cosmopolitan; Literary Guild alternate; dramatic rights: Charles Rembar.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Erdrich's rich, lapidary new novel opens with Jack Mauser drinking himself silly with a young pick-up, who subsequently freezes to death in her thin shoes in a North Dakota blizzard. Jack would certainly seem to be a loser, and someone any sane woman would stay away from, but this isn't a novel about him. It's a novel about his many wives, who come together at his funeral sometime later and get stuck in another blizzard, which gives them the opportunity to open up about their deepest secrets. Since this is Erdrich (The Beet Queen, LJ 8/86) writing, these women are predictably passionate, quirky, and, well, unpredictable, ranging from solid Dot (who married Jack on a dare and has another husband in jail), utterly seductive Eleanor, brisk Candace, and childlike Marlis. The plot may sound a bit formulaic, but the effect is anything but. Erdrich sometimes pushes her sensuous descriptions over the top, and the effect is near-parody. But the result will entertain readers everywhere. For most collections.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Flamingo (February 3, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0006547915
• ISBN-13: 978-0006547914
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,004,556 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Louise Erdrich is the author of twelve novels as well as volumes of poetry, children's books, and a memoir of early motherhood. Her debut novel, Love Medicine, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent novel, The Plague of Doves, a New York Times bestseller, received the highest praise from Philip Roth, who wrote, "Louise Erdrich's imaginative freedom has reached its zenith--The Plague of Doves is her dazzling masterpiece." Louise Erdrich lives in Minnesota with her daughters and is the owner of Birchbark Books, a small independent bookstore.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Better off reading _Love Medicine_, May 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Tales of Burning Love: A Novel (Paperback)

Louise Erdrich is a fine, accomplished writer. Somehow, it seemed to me that this novel exhibited signs of subject exhaustion. I believe that _Love Medicine_ is proof that Erdrich should be held in high regard as a writer, as the talent is truly there. That work also served as a template for some of her later works, a fact which I am a bit disappointed by since I feel that none of them have achieved the same level of poetic impact. _Tales of Burning Love_ is well written, but I feel that the story drags in places, and can be tedious to sit through; it helped that I read the majority of it while riding the bus. I was sorry to see her using the same characters again. They are strong, worthy, and well-developed characters, but in the context of this particular story they seemed more contrived.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a lot of psychology there - a very good read, February 13, 2009

By 

Aleksandra Nita-Lazar (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tales of Burning Love: A Novel (Paperback)

"Tales of Burning Love": what a cunning, deceitful, yet revealing title... I was long waiting to lay my hand on something by Louise Erdrich and this is the first of her novels I have read. I figured out that this is not considered the best one of her works, but I actually liked it quite a lot.

The plot is set in or around Fargo, North Dakota (with occasional changes of setting) - this already made the novel interesting, as my mental image of Fargo is that from the Cohen brothers' "Fargo" (and Erdrich's descriptions fit very well what has already been in my head). The bracket character is Jack Mauser, a part-Native American man, as masculine as a man can be; and as fatally attractive to women. Married five times, Jack has a talent to get involved in risky or suspicious business schemes and when he dies because of one, his four former wives meet at his funeral. On the way back, they get caught in a snowstorm in one car (with the mysterious hitchhiker) and there lies the real essence of this novel, for the women take turns telling the stories of their lives and their relationships with Jack. As the stories unravel, the reader gets to know better all four: Eleanor (my favorite character - I could relate to her best), the meticulous and neurotic scientist, doing research at the nunnery, a daughter of a circus acrobat and of a funeral home owner; Candice, a perfectionist, a dentist, who has everything thought out, but surprises herself with unexpected love; Marlis, a would-be artist with no morals; and Dot, a solid, down-to earth accountant. They reveal a lot of tender feelings and intimate details, and each shows her unique personality. How the women so different can be infatuated with one man... It makes me wonder. From their stories, a complex portrait of Jack emerges.

The snowstorms clasp the whole novel, the first one in which Jack loses his first wife, and the one after the funeral. I liked this, as well as the role of the fire in the story. The novel is full of unexpected turns, and when it seems to slow down, something happens to wake the reader up - at the beginning I though I would not like it, but after the first chapter I really got into it. The spiritual aspect mixes with the physical, the feminine with the masculine, so that the whole range of human endeavors is explored. And be really aware, that the title, although it seems to promise a romance novel (as well as the strange, for me not very appealing, cover), is really tricky and can be understood only while reading.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Prose as cool and constant as rain., December 28, 1998

By 

Jennifer "Robbins-Mullin" (Pittsburgh) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tales of Burning Love: A Novel (Paperback)

Effortlessly Erdrich weaves a web of words that quickly unravels the skeen of the characters lives. We are told where they've been, and yet where they are and where they are going is as swirling and directionless as the snow in a squall. And so much of the characters lives are indeed revealed during a snowbound incident. There they must come to grips with the truths in their lives and what it means to love, lose, and love again. I highly recommend this novel. Of all Erdrich's work it most fully encompasses what it FEELS like to be stumbling through love and life.