This was a very unique book. It was told through three generations of Dakota women, but add the perspectives of the dolls they owned.

The author stated with the most recent generation and filters back to connect all the stories.

This came to me at a time when I wasn't able to focus on it or give it the attention it deserved. I tried and found I couldn't concentrate, The writing was clear and the characters were introduced as expected.

I would like to try again sometime in the future. I'll give it four stars and return here to update the review, should I get through the book.

A Council of Dolls; A Novel by Mona Susan Power was absolutely breathtaking! I was truly thankful to have gotten to read this before most people! I would like to purchase this one for my physical library!

Wow just wow.

Power really shows of her writing talent in this novel. She handles such a heavy topic with such delicacy, her writing is just beautiful.

This right here is one of my favorite books I’ve read this year. It has many things I love in fiction that remind me why I love reading: interconnected stories that unravel a larger narrative, matrilineal relationships, an exploration of Native history and intergenerational trauma, well-developed characters, and light magic within a real world setting. I really enjoyed the use of the dolls to tell a story of the girls while their lives intersect, the dolls being characters themselves. It was a heartbreaking story, and an important one. I was shocked by so much of what I read. I wholeheartedly recommend it and can’t wait to read more of Mona Susan Power’s work!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review! This gorgeous novel revolves around the lives of Sissy, Lillian, and Cora. A Council of Dolls is a heartbreaking sweeping family saga that spans across three generations. I thought that this novel was a beautiful and thoughtful piece that I will be recommending to readers groups. While this book is an emotional read, it feels like an honest depiction of trauma, racism, and healing. I appreciate that I had the pleasure of reading this book.

Reader friends: this book should have been the winner of the National Book Award, not just a nominee! What a spectacular way to end my reading year – with such a heartrending, unforgettable story. The book-jacket copy doesn’t lie that Mona Susan Power “weaves a spell of love and healing that comes alive on the page.”

First – the premise of this book… three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women and the dolls in their lives…

… it might be hard for you to believe a doll can have a spirit. A loved doll.

That line draws light to the power of imagination, the relationship between girls and their dolls, and begs the question of spiritualism and magic and protection. The dolls play a pivotal role in this narrative – so creatively ingenious and effective in portraying the horrors of Indian boarding schools and the actions of the US government against Native people.

In this book, you’ll feel the pain of hunger, the soul-crushing injustice of ‘assimilation,’ at the Carlisle Indian School, and the pain at having everything you’ve ever known stolen. I had wet eyes, and chills, numerous times while reading this book. My emotions bloomed and morphed as I read – from sadness and anger to periods of hope and awe.

And the writing… it’s simply sublime. Me, the biggest griper of many first-person fiction narratives, can lay down my first-person, poo-pooing mantle. When done well, first person can shine, and under Power’s insanely talented hands, it sparks like the very magic of the dolls in the book:

She’s the only person I know who grows when she gets mad, gets bigger and bigger until it’s like she fills the whole room, and there’s no air left to breathe.

What finally gives me the courage to push myself forward, into the new school year, is the steady voice of the Missouri River, which runs beneath this hill. Its powerful flow continues as it did before this place was built, before our teachers were born, before English words ever traveled across its waves. This water is my relative, and it’s so much stronger than anyone inside these buildings.

The black robe and wimple that seems screwed onto her head don’t look like a uniform on her, rather a new skin she grew to stop being human.

My sister is covered with nuns, the way ants swarm a beetle trapped on its back, or crows peck apart a downed squirrel.

Desipte this book being honest about the treatment of Indigenous people throughout US history, there is hope and positivity throughout:

The point is that even in difficult times, see how the light is always working to come in. Don’t forget to notice.

Maybe we should dance and dream and pray for the good of everything in the world because we’re meant to restore it together.

Thematically, there is much here about storytelling – its place in culture and identity, and in healing. Power also touches upon language, which is so integral to storytelling, and how the loss of a native language equates to a loss of culture, and a loss of a way of thinking.

Of the white nuns who forbade tribal language: …I’d think to myself, ‘You could never learn my language. Your spirit isn’t big enough to walk in our words. They hold mysteries you can only understand with the heart.’

And another interior thought:

They treat our language like a sickness so contagious it must be cut from our tongues and minds.

I adored this book (a parrot provided some levity as well) and gave it a 4.5 rounded up. Like others, I felt the last section was not as strong as the other three, but I also feel this is very likely a publishing-industry issue of “keep your book around 300 pages,” and that the end simply reflects the author not having enough space to deepen her story as she did in the earlier chapters. Because, let me tell you – she proves, in spades, that she is expert at writing immersive first-person fiction.

While I didn't love this one, I did end up learning a lot about Indigenous culture through fiction.

Sadly I’m DNFing this one as I can’t get into it. The longer chapters just don’t work for me or my attention span at the moment.

I don’t think long chapters are going to work for readers now with how attention spans have changed since COVID hit in 2019.

A Council of Dolls follows three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women, connected over a century by the experiences of massacres, Indian boarding schools, cultural pride and advocacy, family, and a tradition of treasured dolls. Cora was born in 1888, in the wake of the so-called Indian Wars, sent to boarding school across the country, far from her home and family to be “civilized.” Lillian is Cora’s daughter, born in 1925 into a tumultuous home life, as her parents (but especially her father) deal with the trauma of their youth, and the family generally struggles with meeting their needs. Cora and her sister, Blanche, are also sent to boarding schools, where Blanche refuses to bow to vicious nuns and Cora finds refuge from tragedy around her in memories of a doll she had to give away before leaving home. Lillian’s daughter, Sissy, is both our opening and closing narrator. Born in Chicago in 1961, she has both wonderful and terrifying memories of time with her volatile mother. And she too has a close doll friend, who supports her, in particular, through those terrifying and fragile times. The stories of these women’s lives shadow and mirror each other’s in many ways, and those tales are told both in their own voices and through the voices and perspectives of each of their dolls.

Well, I can see why this made awards lists. It’s incredibly emotionally resonant, with prose that is powerful, artistic, and yet remains accessible and really compulsively readable. I made it through the audiobook in just a few days, because I just kept wanting to pick it up and re-immerse myself in these characters. It doesn’t shy away from terrible and heartbreaking truths, but it maintains an equal focus on the cultural and familial connections that provide reason and hope. While all three perspectives (possibly we could ever say four, since the age difference between Sissy’s two sections is big enough to set them very apart from each other), were moving and compelling, I was particularly drawn to the first, that of Sissy as a young girl. This is honestly a surprise for me, as child narrators are *very* hit or miss for me (and more often than not, a miss, with the notable exception, recently-ish, of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line.) In any case, the way that complex topics like land theft and residential schools and forced assimilation leading to language/culture loss were explained to Sissy as a child was incredibly touching and tender and heartbreaking. It was such a highlight (though one would wish it didn’t have to be) of passing on what does remain – the good memories and touchstones along with the bad and traumatic. Similarly, the hypervigilance of Sissy, as a child with an inconsistent/unstable parent (at least in part as a result of an attempt to “toughen a child up to prepare them for the world”) is well portrayed and adds to the building heartbreaking-ness of the story, while also being well-balanced with the softness of the good memories of a father when he’s there and a mother in her better moments.

Another major aspect of this novel is one that I was lukewarm on, at least to start: the doll theme and parallels through the generations. Honestly, I am usually lukewarm on dolls – they were really never a “thing” for me, so I don’t even have nostalgia to help with that. But to be honest, the dolls as a literary vehicle for the things each character knows but doesn’t want to/isn’t ready for yet (or symbolic of a literal experience/fate of their owner), is developed so well. The creepy-factor I usually get from dolls was just, nonexistent, by the end, because of the power with which Power’s writing utilizes them. Very affecting.

Between the dolls and the girls who bonded with them, this novel covers boarding/residential schools to massacres to “legal” land grabs to the ‘self-loathing born of brutally effective colonization’ to the intergenerational effects of the realities and memories of these atrocities (and the many ways the legacy of being failed can lead to failure in turn), in an overall individual experience of the universal truth of indigenous peoples’ treatment at the hands of colonizers (white people) and their government(s). The thing is though (and I know I’ve said this already, but I feel the need to reiterate), there is also, especially in the work that the older Sissy’s perspectives has done and continues to do towards healing, but resonant in ways throughout the generations, a great deal of deep, life-saving, cultural connection, familial support and love, clear effort towards doing one’s best as a parent, and just generally a thread of belonging and yearning and hope that brings a well of, if not necessarily joy or happiness, of a sort of contentment and peace that isn’t perfect, but is uplifting/fulfilling all the same.

Throughout this novel, there is a stark acknowledgment of truth, mixed with a delivery of that truth with a profound tenderness, that I feel can only come from (at least semi) autobiographical experience, or an experience that one is intimately familiar with (in the tradition of family stories/lore). The Author’s Note/Afterward of the novel does indicate that that is at least partially true for the contents of this novel, and while it would have been a forceful read either way, that makes the heart of this story, the women and the dolls at its center, beat that much stronger.

The tells of three generation of Native American women. Each has a doll who holds a special place in each woman’s life. Dolls have often taken the place of friend or family in literature. This focuses on women use their dolls for comfort, support and courage.
Recommended

Like how the author started the book with Sissy? And how she was growing up in Chicago and how she Mister grandmother name C o r This is about American native American story. And how each generation faced things in a headlong way through their dolls and spirits. It was an interesting book because how you offered time. All this together and made it very readable and very explainable. The dollars play a very important part in this book. Because everyone represents something to do with that Era Sissy's doll was named Ethel. And she really helped her a lot. Because her mother named Lon had a very troubled past. Her father was very kind to her because he could really understand and he was very gentle and kind to her, but her mother was very mean and very destructive to her. A lot of things happen to your mother In the morning schools where the native americans were forced to go. Sissy would talk to Ethel all the time about things. And Ethel would kind of communicate back to her in her own special way. She also had spirits too in her dreams. L I l l born on reservations in dakota You have to go to a Boarding school as well. Your sister Blanche did not fit in very well with this, and she had a lot of problems with the nun. When christmas she got a shortly temple doll and called m a. She loved the Dull so much, but she gave it up to a dying child. She also talked to miss doll for a while, and she had spirits with her as well when she was at the school. The grandmother named Corey Cora went to a boarding school in Pennsylvania. And there she met Jack who was very Head S T r o n She has a doll named W IRO NA Who had native American clothes On. She also talked to this Doll as will and spirits. The doll was burned when she went to the school in pennsylvania. I like the title of the book because it was very interesting and you'll find out at the end of the book, how these dolls were made and how they played a very important part of the story of the book.

This was excellent. I have a book by her that I haven't read - The Grass Dancer - and it's moved way higher up the list now. This is a very heartbreaking story about residential schools in the US and the effects of intergenerational trauma. There is a close up story of each woman in three generations of Dakota women, and the dolls they had with them. The plot device of the dolls carrying knowledge worked well and was not cheesy.

“We’ve learned that healing the present doesn’t only clear waters in the future, recovery also flows backward and alleviates the suffering of ancestor… And because Time is our relative, a flexible being that moves through every though and memory, branching into a million rivers of possibility, healing even one of its streams will eventually heal the world.”
This was the quote from A Council of Dolls which struck most with me as I finished the book. This story follows three Dakota girls and their dolls as they are made to survive residential and boarding schools as well as the impact these experiences have on the generations of girls who come after. This is a book focused on the experience of the ways in which the historical trauma from the experiences of Native American people influences the generations after the events have occur. I found the way in which Power organizes her exploration of historical trauma to be particularly moving. Whether moving forward in the generations, she moves backwards in time from daughter to mother through generations. In this way we see first the impact of the traumatic experiences of the women and then see the experiences which led to this impact when the women were girls. Power addresses the horror of residential schools as well as the impacts traumatized parents can have on their children without seeming to luxuriate within these experiences. She does so honestly and kindly. Within the book, in addition to focusing on the traumatic past of these characters, she also explores how present generations can heal from historical trauma. It is in this healing that the quote I discussed earlier comes up. I found Power’s writing to flow well and her use of language to be absolutely beautiful. I would highly recommend picking up this book.
Trigger warnings: alcohol abuse, child death (by sickness and by violence), child abuse (physical emotional, and verbal), residential schools, anti-Native American racism
Thank you Mariner Books and Netgalley for sending me this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

A Council of Dolls is mostly a historical fiction novel with fantastical elements. The story follows an indigenous family starting in the 1960s, 1930s, and working back to the 1890s. Each time period features a young child and her relationship with her doll while being set against the context of government residential schools and the intergenerational trauma that came from such institutions.

I thought it was really interesting that this book worked backwards in time and featured such young children. The stories start with Sissy, the "current" generation, and goes back to her mother, Lillian, and her grandmother, Cora. Another interesting part is that each of these women all overlapped, so you see Sissy and Cora interacting, Cora and Lillian, etc. I thought that this really helped to explore trauma as you can see at the beginning that Sissy lived in an at times abusive home, and then in the next part of the book you see what happened to Lillian and her later husband at residential schools. You can see what the characters had to do to survive their trauma, which gives more context to how they acted in the pervious part of the book. Without that context, which the young children also don't have, the adults act in ways that the children can't understand. Telling the story this way, especially with young children as the main characters, really drove home to me how trauma can affect other generations, without the new generations ever really understanding the extent of what happened in traumatic situations.

This book does show a lot of abuse that happened to very young children. Many parts were upsetting to read. I felt like it at no point became gratuitous and the depictions of violence showed the terrible abuse that happened at residential schools and its impact. I would advise being aware and thoughtful about this before you start the book. I also advise continuing with the book if you can; the last quarter really brought everything together for me.

I will say that I am absolutely terrified of dolls and it took me a while to warm up to the idea that these dolls had some way of communicating with the girls. They brought an interesting childlike energy and helped to bring the stories together in a fulfilling way.

Overall, I thought this book was a challenging but extremely engaging read. I made me think a lot while and after I was reading it. I highly recommend it if you are in the space to read a book about trauma, abuse, and violence. 4.5 stars rounded to 4 from me. Thank you to Mariner Books and NetGalley for the electronic advanced reader's copy of this book, my thoughts are my own!

This story quietly, achingly broke my heart over and over. I think mostly because I know how true these stories are for so many. I'm overcome with pride in my fellow Dakhóta, and with appreciation for the gift of this story.

I say that these stories broke my heart, and they did--they do, but they also brought me full circle and left me so grateful, so hopeful, and so proud. They left me facing forward, facing East.

I've read in a recent New York Times interview that the author resists the "magical realism" label that some have tried to place on her story--this story. I emphatically support that active, vocal resistance. Words are so powerful, and labels like that feel like a way of discrediting the whole of the story. A story that holds so many truths and allows its readers the opportunity to feel them.

Hang on to this one.
toksá aké, book friends

This was a beautifully emotional story about 3 generations of indigenous women. I really loved the different points of views and imagery. Mona Susan Power is a wordsmith and I look forward to reading more from her!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a free ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

What a powerful novel. It's extremely tragic and heartwrenching while also somehow still holding onto a little thread of hope as we follow the stories of three generations of Dakota women: Sissy, Lillian, and Cora. We learn about how their lives were impacted by the colonization of their land and the horrific boarding schools they were forced to attend. This is definitely a book that will stay with me for a long time.

I have not been engrossed by a book as much as I was with A Council of Dolls in a LONG time. 

A Council of Dolls is a novel that follows three generations of women in the same family. This novel explores colonization and generational trauma. Each part explores the life of a girl and her doll, and the next part follows that girl's mother.

I started reading A Council of Dolls without much knowledge of what the story was about, but I was hooked as soon as I started. It is rare for me to go through the whole reading experience absolutely loving a book, but A Council of Dolls was amazing the whole way through. 

This novel deals with the violence of colonialism, boarding schools, and how each woman in the story is emotionally and mentally impacted by what their ancestors go through. 

The role of dolls in this story is incredibly impactful. The dolls are their own characters, going through the same experiences as their beloved owners. At first, I wasn't sure about this element, but it really added to the story and the storytelling overall.

A Council of Dolls is one of my favorite novels of 2023 and I would recommend this to historical fiction lovers and people who enjoy intergenerational stories.

I was very happy to be able to read this book. A very touching story about three generations of Yanktonai Dakota women and the dolls from they had as children. This story is told in three parts and brings light to the different traumas and hardships each had lived through. I resonate with this book as a Dakota woman myself and was deeply moved by the subject matter as these are the stories of my grandparents and great grandparents. This is one of my favorite reads this year and these stories will stick with me forever.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC to review.