Rating: 
Summary: It is strange, but I love it!!!
Review: I really really like this book. I don't like to read but this just seems to take hold of you and pull you into the story. I love how they seem to tell the same story but in differend views. Mary is a determened girl, I hope she finds her lost brother (I haven't finished the book yet). If you like to read interesting books, or if you don't, read this, it's a great book!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Determinedly bleak
Review: I started this novel after reading Erdrich's Love Medicine. While it is clearly not as lyrically written, it is more accessible, and I admired Erdrich's inventiveness as she creates a very unique set of characters. I never finished "Beet Queen", quitting not that far from the end. When Celestine's child turned out to be so impossible, it was the last straw. "Beet Queen" is just too determinedly bleak, to no higher purpose I could discern or discover in reading reviews here.
Rating: 
Summary: Everyone should read this wonderful novel!!!!
Review: I think that Jude in this novel is very sexy
Rating:
Summary: Many Voices, Many Stories - One Powerful Novel
Review: Louise Erdrich once said that her novels fell "together like a quilt, a crazy quilt,", and The Beet Queen is no exception. The author has constructed a powerful novel out of many voices and individual stories. The novel begins in 1932, with young Mary and Karl Adare getting off a train in Argus, North Dakota by themselves. A moment of fear sends Karl running back to the train, and Mary in the other direction, towards her aunt's house. This division between them sends them on different paths. Mary grows up as the despised cousin of lovely Sita, the foster daughter of Pete and Fritzie who own a butcher shop. Karl is eventually sent back to Minnesota to grow up in a Catholic children's home. The people who know them - Sita, Celestine, the Chamber of Commerce president Wallace Pfef, and finally Dot, the Beet Queen of the title - add their voices to weave a story that goes beyond Karl and Mary to include the entire town of Argus. Spanning forty years, the novel encompasses changes not only within the characters but in the town and the times in general.
Erdrich's characterizations are complex and heartfelt, especially since the multiple points-of-view allow us to see the characters from both inside and out. When characters describe the same incident from different perspectives, we get a deep understanding of what is at stake for each.
The Beet Queen is one of Erdrich's finest novels. Fans of Erdrich's will recognize some of the characters that appeared in the earlier Love Medicine and in her later books, but you don't need to be familiar with the author's work to become engrossed in this one. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: a bit of nothingness
Review: Mary and Karl are suddenly orphaned when their mother takes a ride in a small airplane at a show which flies off into the distance. With limited options they decide to go to their Aunt's in Argus. However as the train they arrived on begins to leave, Karl jumps on and disappears for 20 years. From there on it gets worse.There are a lot of selfish people in this book that kick the people that they need the most. I didn't relate to anyone or any of their motives, they all seemed like cardboard cut outs stuck in unfamiliar situations. I think this book was summed up when a fellow worker asked me what the book was about. I was up to page 300 of 340 pages and all l could reply was "Nothing much."
Rating:
Summary: a bit of nothingness
Review: Mary and Karl are suddenly orphaned when their mother takes a ride in a small airplane at a show which flies off into the distance. With limited options they decide to go to their Aunt's in Argus. However as the train they arrived on begins to leave, Karl jumps on and disappears for 20 years. From there on it gets worse. There are a lot of selfish people in this book that kick the people that they need the most. I didn't relate to anyone or any of their motives, they all seemed like cardboard cut outs stuck in unfamiliar situations. I think this book was summed up when a fellow worker asked me what the book was about. I was up to page 300 of 340 pages and all l could reply was "Nothing much."
Rating:
Summary: A Brilliant Portrait Of Agression, Self-Destruction & Love!
Review: On a cold spring morning in 1932, fourteen-year old Karl Adare and his eleven-year-old sister, Mary, arrive by freight train in Argus, North Dakota. Abandoned by their mother, they have come to look for their mother's sister, Aunt Fritzie, who runs the House of Meats, a butcher shop, with her husband. The two Adares lose each other. Karl is frightened by a dog and runs back to the boxcar, and Mary runs the other way, toward town. And so begins the forty year saga of a family, and a community. Through the years the family holds together through the tenacity of relationships, in a fierce and passionate drama, filled with Erdrich's dark humor. Changes sweep across their lives - birth, death, madness. Change also comes in the form of a growing sugar beet industry. Ms. Erdrich story chronicles Mary's life, as she puts down roots in Argus. She also keeps track of the tragic and sensitive dreamer, Karl, on his endless road journeys. He seem to compulsively flee emotional ties, and yet returns to Argus, again and again. At one point Karl says, "I give nothing, take nothing, mean nothing, hold nothing." He struggles with connection - with the past, and with his family and community. Mary's astounding dreams and fantasies also play an incredible and surreal role in the novel. Themes of parenting and abandonment, jealousy, sexual obsession, and great love play out with passion in Ms. Erdrich's complex and believable characters, as does her portrayal of people's aggression and the self-destructive side of human nature. Her narrative is written with beauty, clarity and pure magic. This is not an easy book to read, nor is it always pleasant. It is, however, well worth the effort. Like many of her characters, Ms. Erdrich has a foot in two worlds. She grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota, near the Bureau of Indian Affairs school where both her mother, of French-Ojibwe descent, and her father, of German descent, taught. She writes movingly about Native Americans "whose nobility resides in their ability to make their lives work."
Rating:
Summary: Confusing, yet interesting
Review: So many things happen to the characters (which are about twelve or so of them), it's hard to keep track and think back of who relates to whom. The beginning is exciting because so many things happen, but then near the end, it gets boring because so many outragous things are happening and they do not become believeable or shocking anymore (like Sita dying in her garden and Russell dying on the float in the parade). It becomes so depressing at the end how everyone is sick, dying, dependent or crazy. I do not understand the deep symbolism in this book and sometimes I couldn't even tell if something was really happening or the writer was trying to trick me. It's ok, nothing spectacular, interesting read.
Rating:
Summary: Confusing, yet interesting
Review: So many things happen to the characters (which are about twelve or so of them), it's hard to keep track and think back of who relates to whom. The beginning is exciting because so many things happen, but then near the end, it gets boring because so many outragous things are happening and they do not become believeable or shocking anymore (like Sita dying in her garden and Russell dying on the float in the parade). It becomes so depressing at the end how everyone is sick, dying, dependent or crazy. I do not understand the deep symbolism in this book and sometimes I couldn't even tell if something was really happening or the writer was trying to trick me. It's ok, nothing spectacular, interesting read.
Rating: 
Summary: Puh-leese!
Review: This book is typical of a lot of the nothingness that is passing as literature these days. The characters are flat and emotionless, with minimal dialogue. I think the author must have written a bunch of absurd plot twists on bits of paper and pulled them out of a jar as she was writing. A mother abandons her children by jumping on a stunt plane at a fair. Two orphans get off a train, the boy sticks his face in a bush, gets attacked by a dog, jumps back on the train and doesn't see his sister for 20 years. The sister wakes up with her hands glowing blue. A guy is having a conversation, the suddenly starts jumping on the bed, flips off and breaks his back. Readers that think the metaphors are deep and meaningful are simply afraid to admit that they just DON'T MAKE ANY SENSE! Why is it so hard to find a simple, entertaining bit of fiction these days!
|
