Book Review: Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Author: Louise Erdrich

Title: Love Medicine

Series: Love Medicine #1

Genre: Historical Fiction, Classic, Short Stories, Fantasy

Format: ebook

Pages: 367

Published: January 1, 1984

Where I Got It: My shelf (Amazon)

Summary: 

Set on and around a North Dakota Ojibwe reservation, Love Medicine is the epic story about the intertwined fates of two families: the Kashpaws and the Lamartines.

With astonishing virtuosity, each chapter draws on a range of voices to limn its tales. Black humor mingles with magic, injustice bleeds into betrayal, and through it all, bonds of love and family marry the elements into a tightly woven whole that pulses with the drama of life.

Filled with humor, magic, injustice and betrayal, Erdrich blends family love and loyalty in a stunning work of dramatic fiction.

Review:

Been meaning to read this for a long, long time. I couldn't find any paper version of this at any of my local stores BUT I wanted to read this and I gave up for a long while. A little while ago this was for sale as an ebook on Amazon...so I grabbed it and then decided to make my book club read this with me. 

The Kashpaws and Lamartines are two families that seem to have intertwined fates. A mixture of some dark humor...magic....injustice....betrayal....the bonds of family will continue on. 

I wish I had checked out this ebook that I bought because the formatting is all wrong and I couldn't return it so I just pushed through. It was so hard to read because of this. I am really upset that the ebook did me dirty like this.

The beginning was rough for me for a couple of reasons. 1) The formatting made it SO hard to read 2) I was really confused on who was who and what was really going on. I feel like we just got dropped into this world. Maybe if the formatting was right there would've been clearly defined chapters with "Kasphaws" or "Lamartine" or whoever is narrating. What made it was that it was jumping around SO much. I think we even were jumping to different times WHICH maybe if the formatting was right....it would've made sense. 

Once I got used to the formatting and found my footing, I enjoyed this immensely. This was really profound and it really hit me hard. Especially the one funeral scene. I think I even shared the quote on Facebook. This author really does know how to get the heart and pull your emotions. 

I need to find a paper version or a better ebook version. I feel like I missed a lot and I can't necessarily blame the author. Please avoid this version. I should've read the reviews....

But yes...what I could decipher and understand...I enjoyed. The ending was much better and it was SO impactful. I'll have to give this 2 stars for now. Maybe someday I'll find an actual version that works well and give it a second chance/re-read. 

Challenge(s):

- TBR Reading Challenge (#8)