Join a book club that is reading The Sentence: A Novel!

Denver-Berkeley Book Club

We meet monthly online and in-person around the Berkeley neighborhood of Denver, CO. We focus on one genre every few months, from memoirs to fiction.

The Sentence: A Novel

"Dazzling. . . . A hard-won love letter to readers and to booksellers, as well as a compelling story about how we cope with pain and fear, injustice and illness. One good way is to press a beloved book into another's hands. Read The Sentence and then do just that."—USA Today, Four Stars

In this New York Times bestselling novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award–winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage, and of a woman's relentless errors.

Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading "with murderous attention," must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls' Day 2019 and ends on All Souls' Day 2020. Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional, and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written. 

BUY THE BOOK

Published Sep 6, 2022

400 pages

Average rating: 7.28

377 RATINGS

|

Community Reviews

boyleschris
Oct 20, 2024
Chris's recommendation. The best of my annual spooky reads. About a bookstore haunted by their worst customer. Native American folklore.
KLN
Jun 29, 2024
10/10 stars
I loved this book so much that I immediately read another Louise Erdrich novel, and also selected this for my book club. There are so many themes and contemporary issues - most difficult and fraught - that are contained in this novel, and yet the story and our main protagonist, Tookie, never feel overwhelmed. Rather, this is a reflection of the complicated times we live in, and the many human (and as such, varied, flawed, uncertain) responses. I deeply appreciated learning more about the culture of the indigenous characters and felt that I as the reader was being invited to experience their stories. Lastly, the list of book recommendations at the end made this not only a must-read but also a must-buy!
JL Reads
Apr 17, 2025
4/10 stars
I never fully connected with this story, and I think that’s largely due to the writing style. The storytelling felt disjointed and lacked a natural flow. The premise was intriguing, but if it hadn’t been the library’s book club pick, I probably wouldn’t have finished it. Book #35 in 2025
Anonymous
Jan 11, 2025
8/10 stars
3.5, feeling generous

hauntings and ghosts! fear! pasts! love! will make you feel a few different ways

will love to see how this book is perceived in 30 years
ellengryphon
Jan 09, 2025
10/10 stars
Ellen

See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.