Upon the announcement that Louise Erdrich’s novel ''LaRose” won the National Book Critics Circle Prize for Fiction, All Things Considered presents an audio clip of Erdrich discussing book during a Thread live event.
“LaRose” is set in an Ojibwe community in North Dakota and it opens with a brutal tragedy. A man shoots and kills his best friend's five-year-old son in a hunting accident. The guilt is so heavy that the man and his wife decide to give their own son, LaRose, to the bereaved couple.
SPEAKER: Louise Erdrich's latest novel, LaRose, has won the National Book Critics Circle prize for fiction.
The book is set in an Ojibwe community in North Dakota. It opens with a brutal tragedy. A man shoots, and kills his best friend's five-year-old son in a hunting accident. The guilt is so heavy that the man and his wife decide to give their own son, LaRose, to the bereaved couple.
Last May, Louise Erdrich joined Kerri Miller for a thread live event at the Fitzgerald Theater. They began talking about restraint. LaRose has a number of highly emotional scenes, but Erdrich says, she worked hard to make sure they were powerful without being overdone.
LOUISE ERDRICH: This started almost writing itself. And I thought, I don't want to go into the-- I'm just going to tell the story. I'm going to use-- if I can-- I went through and tried to cut out all the adjectives. Yeah. I went through and just tried to cut out any extraneous emotion because the events themselves were more than enough.
And I needed that. So thanks for noticing. Thank you.
KERRI MILLER: Is that unusual to go through the language like that and pare out the adjectives and the emotionalism?
LOUISE ERDRICH: I wish I'd done it all along.
KERRI MILLER: Why?
LOUISE ERDRICH: I look back and I always want to revise my books, and I want to take out the fancy language. Some people like it, and then they say, I love the way you put this. I go back and think, oh, god, I was trying so hard to be poetic.
KERRI MILLER: Isn't that the show-offy stuff that we like?
LOUISE ERDRICH: I don't know.
KERRI MILLER: We want that as readers.
LOUISE ERDRICH: I don't know. I think, as you-- I'll say, getting older makes you cut to the chase. You just want to cut to the chase in every way. And to get it written and not to obscure anything, I want things to be plain and simple.
SPEAKER: Author Louise Erdrich talking with Kerri Miller last May. Yesterday, Louise Erdrich's book, LaRose, won the National Book Critics Circle prize for fiction this year.
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