Customer Reviews

Tracks

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

After reading several different Native American authors, I finally had the privilege of reading Louise Erdrich. TRACKS captured my imagination as I listened to Nanapush and Pauline tell their stories. Erdrich brilliantly has the two narrators cast doubt upon each other's tales- a tactic which makes the book all the more enthralling to read. Pauline's zealous quest for sainthood, filled with sacrifices that border on ridiculousness, contrasts with Fleur's relationship to nature, embodied in the forest and the lake creature, Misshepeshu. Erdrich's characters endear themselves to the readers with their first-person revelations, their bawdy senses of humor, and their uncanny strength. The sexual banter between Margaret and Nanapush brings the characters to thriving, realistic life. TRACKS presents these characters against the backdrop of a dwindling forest, which government agents consume piece by piece, selling to American logging companies. As Fleur and Nanapush's homeland disappears, their struggle to control their own future becomes present and touching. Each of the characters reaches out in a different way to attempt to determine their future in some way. TRACKS deserves several reads, and Louise Erdrichs deserves high praise for an incredible and entertaining work.

"Tracks" of Fleur and through her the end of a way of life for a Native American tribe in the early 20th century. Her story and the tribes story is told through the eyes of two people, Nanapush an elder who is sympathetic to Fleur and the Native American lifestyle and through Pauline a woman twisted with a sort of love/hate obsession with Fleur and a repulsion of her own heritage.

Nanapush tells the story to his `granddaughter' Lilly, Fleur's child. He does this to explain her incomprehensible mother who seems to have abandoned her for no reason as well as a way to explain the politics of the tribe. He wants to save Lily from what he sees as an unsuitable marriage and reunite her with her mother and fully with her Native American heritage.

Pauline, narrates to who knows what or who or for what purpose. Her madness is captivating and is a manifestation of the sickness, literally and figuratively, that the alien (white) culture brings to the Native American people.

At the same time this is a story about women. Fleur, is an incomprehensible woman who breaks the rules of what it is to be an Indian woman and is feared and respected as a consequence of her actions. Her beauty and fierceness make her a force of nature. Pauline is a woman who is treated without worth as a woman. It is this, and her soul sickening envy, I believe, that drives her madness. Margaret, Lily's grandmother represents the traditional strong Native American woman I believe, and while her methods for survival are of the Mac tuck variety she ends up surviving and living the best of all three of the woman.

The book covers 12 years and is a lyrical look at a culture's struggle to survive.

In keeping with the development of Erdrich's rich, fictional Native American saga, "Tracks" takes her characters one step closer to reality. Contrary to initial impression, the novel does not limit itself by cultural lines. Erdrich's work provides an insightful and engrossing tale, which highlights the struggles of a frayed culture. However, spoilers abound and surprises go unappreciated for those who haven't read her previous works first. Erdrich makes brilliant use of alternating narrators. One speaker is a highly spiritual grandfather named Nanapush, and the other a crazed and confused Indian woman called Pauline, retelling the life of protagonist Fleur. Both offer differing slants when shedding light on Fleur's troubles, including passage through a suicidal youth and falling in love with shy Indian boy Eli. Rich imagery, and the short-and-sweet figurative way of Native American storytelling may be a bit much for some. However, the manner of speech fits the novel beautifully for those so inclined to a book of this type. Interesting, not mind-blowing, it is an honest and sufficient work in the representation and preservation of a culture.

I read this book in a Native American Literature course about 12 years ago. My father is full blooded Native American and my teacher was white and I thought he couldn't teach me anything. I had a chip on my shoulder and my teacher knocked it off of me with this book. He told me he wanted ME to teach this book to the class so I had to read this book like I had never read any book before. Perhaps my unique connection to the book made me enjoy the book more than these other reviewers, but I think that it would still be one of my favorite books even if had not read it for class. I teach high school English and have read A LOT of books - all kinds of books, not just classics. Even if you read this and find that you can't fully understand it, that's OKAY. Part of the problem with my students is they are always looking for the AUTHOR"S interpretation or the TEACHER'S interpretation - just enjoy your own interpretation. The book is not that hard to understand, but the imagery and symbolism is deep. This is an important book, as pretty soon there will be no Native Americans left to tell our stories. Less than 1% of this nation is Native American and it's important to read these stories. The mixing of Christianity with Native traditions is particularly significant in this story. In fact, I based my Master's thesis on the themes in this work. I met Louise Erdrich a couple of years ago at a book signing and I wanted to tell her this book changed my life, but how cheesy would that be?

In all of her work, Louise Erdrich writes with rich visual language, and always from the heart. Until I read Tracks, I held up Love Medicine as Erdrich's best, and one of my all-time favorite novels. Tracks surpasses Love Medicine in scope, personality, and drama. The early lives of Erdrich's legends - Fleur and Moses Pillager, Eli and Nector, Lulu Nanapush,the Morrisseys, and even Sister Leopolda unfold in the despair and heartache of the early part of this century, when the Chippewas were just begining to lose their land and their lives to alcohol, disease, and other pressures from the ever-encroaching whites. What I love about both Love Medicine and Tracks, more than, say, The Beet Queen is the amazing number of characters Erdrich can master, and the way she interweaves their lives. Tracks does Love Medicine one better by making the circle of voices a bit smaller, and the stories more intensely personal. This book made me cry at work and laugh out loud on the subway. If you love the way Erdrich creates many varried personalities to tell a story, you will love this book. If you've never read any of her work, this is an excellent place to start.

Louise Erdrich has written I don't know how many novels featuring Fleur Pillager and her still-increasing North Dakota Chippewa clan. Tracks remains my favorite, mostly because of Nanapush, surely one of the most wonderful characters ever to inhabit the pages of a novel. "Talk is an old man's last vice," Nanapush says. When he gets ill, he says "I got well by talking. Death could not get a word in edgewise, grew discouraged, and traveled on." You won't, you'll sit at Nanapush's feet and never want to get up, not while he's still talking. My only complaint about Tracks is it's too short.

The Beet Queen: A Novel (P.S.) and Love Medicine: A Novel (P.S.) are about the same characters, not really sequels or prequels, just more stories about the same great folks. You'll be happy you get more than one visit.

Erdrich is an amazing weaver of words. There are two narrators in this book, each chapter alternates between Nanapush an older very traditional Ojibwe man and Pauline a contemporary of our main character Fleur, who is shunning the traditional ways.

I had a hard time with this book because I really enjoyed Nanapush's narration, he is funny and wise and insightful. But then I would get to the next chapter that was narrated by Pauline--who in a way reminds me of Elphalba from "Wicked" she is determined to be always right, essentially destroying herself and those around her. She is a selfish and mentally deluded character.

The twin narration follows the life of one character, Fleur. She is like and adoptive daughter to Nanapush and a sort of sister/rival to Pauline. While Pauline is rather homley Fleur is beautiful and other worldly. Her tribes people suspect her of a liason with the monster that lives in the lake.

Its the story of people being pushed off their land by the government and some of their own people. Ultimately the story is a tragedy with some mythic elements and great dashes of humour (courtesy of Nanapush--he is a brilliant character, I'd almost reccomend reading this book on the strength of him alone).

A story of an elusive woman(Fleur Pillager) entangled in the larger event of the Native American peoples' loss of their homeland. Erdrich is masterful in her ability to express both Fleur's human and mystical qualities through the voices of two narrators, each revealing complex lives and relationships of their own. A perspective is presented so that the new white order, who wield "this method of leading others with a pen and piece of paper", becomes a foreign way of thought(though it is of course our modern Western way), which consumes the Native American culture as fast as it wipes the trees from its landscape.

This is a beautiful novel that captures the mystic qualities of the lives that Native Americans lived. Yes, I too read this in college, but count it as one of the best books I read during that time. It is a book for discerning readers who have learned to appreciate the skill it takes for an author to re-create the ethereal nature of the characters she has dreamed.

A general look at American history between 1910 and 1920 will mostly focus on America's involvement in World War I. In Erdrich's work that is placed in this time period, the focus is on another American event: the displacement of Indians from their land. The tale is carefully crafted and the magical realism allows the reader to feel like a part of the story - like he or she is taking part in it. If you want a quick read, or a really thoughtful read, this book provides both.