The central figure and narrator in “Hjemsøkelsen” is Tookie. An, according to herself, “ugly woman” of Native American descent. Tookie has his problems. She has put behind her a stint in prison because of an ill-conceived attempt to smuggle a dead man with a pack of crack taped to his armpit across the state border. When we meet her, Tookie has found a relatively stable life where she goes between home, with her husband and stepdaughter, and her job in a bookstore. The only thing that bothers Tookie is the ghost in the store. An old customer named Flora has passed away and died. And while Flora could be annoying while alive, she’s much worse dead. Now her spirit wanders around the store like a sulking poltergeist, rummaging through bookshelves and inventing mischief. Tookie and the other friends in the shop begin to wonder if it could be a sentence in the manuscript Flora read that killed her. And if so, is there another sentence that can make her disappear? One by Proust, for example? A literary bookstore “Hjemsøkelsen” by Louise Erdrich is about many things. It takes place in 2020 and has the pandemic and the riots after the death of George Floyd as an important backdrop. However, much of the action takes place in this bookstore in Minneapolis. A bookstore that specializes in books that have to do with Native Americans – and which is probably not all that different from Birchbark Books, the store that author Louise Erdrich runs in real life. In the book, we can occasionally glimpse owner Louise, where she sits and writes in her office. BOOKSTORE: Louise Erdrich herself has an ethnic background from the indigenous Ojibwe tribe. The photo was taken in the bookstore she runs in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo: Dawn Villella / AP “Hjemsøkelsen” is not least about books, words and literature. The women who work in this bookshop are exceptionally concerned with the sound of words and the power of wording. Here there is a hail of romance titles and literary references at times. The writing style of Pulitzer Prize winner Louise Erdrich then also shows the same sensitivity to language and words, it reveals an in-depth knowledge of the world of books. This is a book by and for philologists, those who love words. I would think it is close to perfect for reading circles of the kind where you are not in too much of a hurry. Not a book for devouring, but for slow reading. Ambiguous sentence The original title of the novel is “The Sentence”, a title that points to the sentence that Tookie has received. But also on the sentence, both the one who might have killed Flora, and the one who could possibly give her eternal rest. This double meaning is naturally difficult to translate into Norwegian. But “Hjemsøkelsen” brings with it other aspects of the book. The story turns on a classic cliché about native Americans, that of haunted burial grounds. Flora was a white woman, one who has identified so strongly with the American indigenous population that she began to fabricate an indigenous origin. She’s a wannabe, and that was part of what made her so annoying. So perhaps it is not the spirits of the indigenous people that haunt the whites, but the other way around. As one of the bookseller’s ladies puts it: Lovely shades Louise Erdrich herself has indigenous ancestry, and is probably well acquainted with this environment of full, half, quarter and “wannabes”. She describes the modern indigenous culture with warmth and love, and can therefore also indulge in formulations like this: The novel has a perspective that clearly takes the side of the American indigenous population, without being too insistent or demagogic. History does not hide several of the challenges faced by the indigenous population, such as crime, drug abuse or failing care for children. “Hjemsøkelsen” has become a charming, distraught and touching saga about the difficulties of running a bookshop in the time of the pandemic. news reviewer Photo: Gursli Berg Forlag Title: “Hjemsøkelsen” Original title: “The Sentence” Author: Louise Erdrich Genre: Novel Publisher: Gursli Berg Number of pages: 448 Date: 12 January 2023 Hi! My name is Ola Hegdal, and I am a reader and reviewer books for news. Preferably crime and suspense literature, or non-fiction. Feel free to read my review of “The Anomaly” by Hervé Le Tellier, “You are a farmer” by Kristin Auestad Danielsen or “The Night Runner” by Karin Fossum.
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