The writing style was awkward to the point of distraction, and really kept the character development at bay for me. (At one point, I guess a character rolled his truck but it was barely mentioned again? Like your truck flipped? And it’s just…fine?) Storyline picked up in the last 1/3 of the book. Decent plot outline.

About trauma and pain and the lengths we will go to, if misguidedly, to save those we love. Not my favorite Louise Erdrich but she’s so good, this was well worth my reading time.

An interesting novel that just flowed along like a river. Sad, but sweet at times. Liked most of the characters, most of the time. ARC provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair review.

Crystal, a trucker, lives in a small North Dakota town centered around the sugar beet farm owned by the Geists. Her 18-year-old daughter, Kismet, begins dating Gary Geist and quickly finds herself engaged even though she is also in a sort-of relationship with the bookseller’s son, Hugo. Kismet is swept along by Gary’s devotion to her and his insistence that she has saved him from some dark memories surrounding an accident that occurred earlier in the year. While the details of the accident are danced around for most of the novel, we know that things ended in tragedy for two of Gary’s friends (and we suspect that there is more to the story than is being told).

Louise Edrich is fantastic and I’ll happily read everything she writes. As always, she is able to evoke the natural landscape beautifully and writes interesting characters while focusing on Indigenous and environmental issues. That being said, this one was not my favorite as I just couldn’t quite understand why Kismet was so easily swept up in Gary’s life. I kept thinking that perhaps the characters were meant to be allegorical in a way that I was missing. This novel reminded me of the aspects of Barbara Kingsolver’s later books that bother me a bit - a little too much telling (about the negative environmental impact of industrial farming) and not quite enough showing.

I would still recommend this book to fans of Louise Erdrich. For anyone new to Louise Erdrich, I would recommend starting with something just a touch stronger, such as Love Medicine or The Sentence.

Not my favorite Erdrich book. It is a contemporary story set in North Dakota about a girl getting married right out of high school to a guy who probably isn't the guy she should marry. Probably on purpose, the women in this book made poor decisions but it wasn't obvious why. I liked the environmental message about pesticide use. This book is a bit meandering and messy but still worth reading and discussing.

Louise Erdrich is one of my favorite authors and I couldn’t wait to read her latest title, The Mighty Red. A character driven tale of flawed and complicated townspeople living in a rural farming community in North Dakota during the late 2000s. Part coming-of-age story, part environmental and historical fiction, Erdrich is an expert in telling stories of this type.

As the town is reeling from a tragic accident involving several teenage boys, they struggle with the aftermath of the trauma, a multitude of farming crises and the 2008 financial crash. Gary Geist is a golden boy due to inherit 2 farms when his life takes a turn after an accident on a snowy winter night. Hoping his love for Kismet Poe will turn his life around, he proposes and she reluctantly agrees. Kismet and her mother Crystal are central to the story but multiple characters’ perspectives are told as the story unfolds.

The short chapters contribute to this fast-paced read. Erdrich excels at telling beautiful stories about life and the challenges in the rural countryside. A perfect recommendation for readers of Shelley Read’s Go As A River.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper for the advanced reader’s copy.

Thank you to #Harper and #NetGalley for allowing me to read a pre-publication copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Louise Erdrich is a lovely writer. Her books combine clear, precise description with lyrical language in a story that keeps you turning the pages. Kismet and her mother are at the center of the story, but you see the events from many points of view. The Great Red River of the North is a key feature of the town and farmland, and plays its part in a local event that we only gradually learn about in detail through the eyes of different participants and witnesses. The story is about the people, but also about their interaction with the land and the sugar beet crop. And then there is the mystery of what really happened at the party, and which of her lovers Kismet will choose, and the bank robber...

You will wonder about the mystery, care deeply about the characters, and learn a lot about factory farming, fracking, running a used book store, and life in that part of the country. Highly recommended.

Herbicides, pesticides, fracking, and dependence on the sugar beet are all fair topics in this latest Louise Erdrich novel. The story is filled with ordinary people filling their lives with everyday concerns but they and their problems are so real that their lives matter to the reader. The struggle to earn a paycheck during the 2008 depression coupled with the anxiety of several new high school graduates makes for an absorbing read.

Thanks to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publishers for the ARC to read and review.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this lovely novel. As true with all Erdrich novels, the characters were well thought out and distinct. The story itself, however, didn’t measure up to her previous works. I found myself invested in some of the storylines (Kismet & Hugo) more than others (the accident, the missing money).

I have enjoyed several of Louise Erdrich's books, so I was excited to receive this ARC of The Mighty Red. The story takes place in the late 2000s in North Dakota. While the story circulates around the central character of Kismet, a young girl who just graduated from high school and has married one of her high school boyfriends, the story actually encompasses a dozen plus more characters, all bringing with them additional stories and layers of human emotion, environmental issues, and history. The short chapters bounce between characters, which keeps the character-centered story moving. While it could seem overwhelming, the story flows smoothly, bringing everything together in a satisfying ending. While Erdrich's books are popular in my high school, and I will likely purchase this one, it is a good fit for adult collections and book clubs. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this copy!

A teenage love triangle, an ill-advised wedding, bank robberies, woven among history and lessons about farming, pesticides and the impact humans have on this world. Only Louise Erdrich could pull of such a feat all the while infusing a bit of humor.

In The Mighty Red as the town struggles with the aftermath of a tragic accident involving the town golden boy, crop issues, and impending doom of the 2008 financial crash we follow a dysfunctional group of adults and teens trying to navigate their world. Characters from both age groups make a multitude of poor decisions that ultimately make sense as the story unfolds. If you like the insular nature of small towns and the ups and downs such a close knit group weathers this book captures that essence magnificently.

Overall, this book was extremely well written and the characters were rounded out in a way that made them feel more like real people then like characters in the book. The story felt like it took some time to start getting interesting but by the middle of the book I was invested in some of the characters and wanted to see how their stories ended. I have seen other reviewers commenting that they found this book funny which was a surprise to me, if I were looking for a funny book to recommend this wouldn't be anywhere on the list.

Louise Erdrich never disappoints and The Mighty Red is no exception. This absorbing book starts off a little slowly, but it soon picks up with interwoven themes that include the meaning of love; enivronmental issues relating to farming, mining, and other endeavors that take from and poison the earth; the many shades of sanity; ethics and ethical behavior; sanity; guilt and blame; and so much more. Erdrich's prose is deceptively simplistic yet lyrical and beautiful, containing so much meaning in a few phrases. One sample:"everything...was destroying what she had just witnessed, the joinery of creation." Crystal and Kismet shine the most brightly among all of the unforgettable characters , including nature, who inhabit this novel. Highly recommended.

I adore Louise Erdrich, but most of this book just didn't do it for me. The last third picked up a bit, but otherwise I felt the story lacking in character development. Kismet is a goth outcast but suddenly she has three classmates just falling all over her--and she marries one of them, the one she seems to like the least, because he offers financial security, I guess? It's never really explained.

Erdrich really leans into farming minutiae as the book goes on. That, in conjunction with frequent mentions of Anna Karenina, made me wonder if there was an intentional connection between the two. I haven't read the book in so long that I can't really speak to that.

At the end, Kismet's mom's financial problems are tidied up in an implausible little bow so we get a happy-ish ending? There are some good parts here, but Erdrich's previous work sets the bar so high, and TMR didn't come anywhere close to reaching it.

Louise Erdrich has never disappointed me. Although half way through I was thinking...this is missing something. But it was there all along. You'll know what I mean once you get there. A moving commentary on how we inhabit our environment and appreciate it or use it and the same with the people around us.

I had a hard time with Mighty Red and felt disconnected with the entire melancholy book. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher.

Though the writing is pure Erdrich, the story never quite captured me. It was beautifully written and melancholy, and whimsical in places, but also a meandering ride through the minds of people suffering from some pretty intense emotional damage. Maybe that is the point. That we all suffer from damage, and that it is unique to each one of us. But the story traps it's characters in place. They are fighting against forces they don't even see clearly. They can't see their place in the world because they are so consumed with survival or greed. Ultimately the main goal seems like it is to find some form of sustainability, or equilibrium. If that sustainability isn't possible to achieve, then all that's left are coping mechanisms. Perhaps this book didn't grab me the way I'd hoped it would is because it is too close to reality for comfort. But the writing is beyond good. Read it just for the writing alone and you won't be disappointed.

I’m a Louise Erdrich fan, but this for me wasn’t one of her best. There’s a levity to it that’s pleasing, but that also corresponds to a once-over lightly quality. Lots of plot strands and characters and themes mill around in the novel, and they’re all handled gently and with style, and yet they’re often slight or even nonsensical. Why does Kismet marry Gary? Why does her father embezzle all that money only to pay it all back? The answer in both cases seems to be to crank up the plot. But implausibility isn’t a great narrative foundation. The book’s central,notion seems to be respect for the land and a rejection of chemical farming and mono culture (especially sugar);in favor of something more environmentally sound. Yes, of course.Who wouldn’t applaud that? But is that really the anchor of the story? Or guilty? Or repentance? Or relationship choices? Or community? Probably all of the above. And I’m not saying the book was hard to read, not at all. But it sprawled - sweetly - but nevertheless.
You could argue that Erdrich’s sprawl is still more appealing than some other authors’ rigor, and you’d probably be right. But I’d rather see her pulling things together more.

As a sizable fan of Louise Erdrich, it was to my great surprise that I found myself surprisingly disconnected with “The Mighty Red.” I enjoyed Erdrich’s distinct prose as usual, but I managed to get through the entire book without the cast of characters and the plot being able to pull me in like past works of hers that I read were successfully able to. I’d still rank it a solid read overall, but overall, definitely does not join the ranks of my favorite Erdrich novels.

Another melancholy book from Louise Erdrich. While I recognize the author as a brilliant writer, the theme of this book seems to be that happiness is for the privileged, most of the characters in The Mighty Red simply survive. For the right reader this novel might be a winner but it was not my favorite.