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When Faye Travers is called upon to appraise the estate of a family in her small New Hampshire town, she isn't surprised to discover a forgotten cache of valuable Native American artifacts. However, she stops dead in her tracks when she finds in the collection a rare drum, ornamented with symbols she doesn't recognize and dressed in red tassels and a beaded belt and skirt -- especially since, without touching the instrument, she hears it sound.From Faye's discovery, we trace the drum's passage, from the reservation on the northern plains to New Hampshire and back. Through the voice of Bernard Shaawano, an Ojibwe, we hear how his grandfather fashioned the drum after years of mourning his young daughter's death, and how it changes the lives of those whose paths its crosses. And through Faye we hear of her anguished relationship with a local sculptor, who himself mourns the loss of a daughter, and of the life she has made alone with her mother, in the shadow of the death of Faye's sister.Through these compelling voices, The Painted Drum explores the strange power that lost children exert on the memories of those they leave behind, and the intricate, transformative rhythms of human grief. One finds throughout the grace and wit, the captivating prose, and surprising beauty that characterize Louise Erdrich's finest work.Performed by Anna Fields… (more)
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The drum is inhabited by a spirit who gave her life to save her family and has returned to save their descendants. Erdrich moves gracefully between the world of modern neuroses and ancient healing. She describes the connection between nature and those who inhabit it with intensely observant detail:
"Late summer builds to a steamy and forgiving lushness in New Hampshire. There is the crushing scent of heated earth. The audible drinking of taproots of white pines. Maples sucking deep. Best, there is the threatful joy of blackberries, bushes so lush with fruit that to pick them I brave the summer's last ticks and stinging flies....I am a determined picker, lusting after the loaded branches, taking care not to knock off the berries so dense with sweetness they'll let go if the bush is roughly bumped."
THE PAINTED DRUM is another brilliant chapter in the saga of the struggle of Native Americans in the making of America.
I loved this book, first and foremost, because of Erdrich's writing. I listened to the book on audio and was mesmerized by her way with words. The stories were also fascinating, drawing me in and keeping me interested. In some ways, they read like short stories. Erdrich creates a rich picture of each life with only a few words and phrases. Like short stories, I often found myself wanting to know more about this aspect of one character or about what happened next. But, I came to appreciate each nugget that Erdrich shared. But perhaps most amazing was the distinctness of each voice. Although the three narrators were not at all similar, the voice of each rang true.
Highly recommended!
It begins with a woman and her mother who both work together in a business selling what is left behind when someone dies. One day, the
The middle of the book is dedicated to the history of the drum, itself a very interesting drama of life and love and loss. Really it is this story that is the heart of the book. It involves a woman that is impregnated by a man other than her husband. When she goes to live with this man, she discovers that he is married to someone else. The two women, after a period of distrust, become co-conspirators, making the man's life awful. The drum was created by the woman's first husband after he awakens from his out bout of grief and disillusion. The drum has many powers, and it later saves a young girl.
The story ends back with the woman who stole the drum after she has returned it to its rightful place with the family who made it. Well-told, intriguing, and enlightening, the story has excellent messages throughout.
This novel begins and ends with Faye in New Hampshire, but her story “bookends” that of the drum. And with that story, readers find themselves back in familiar Love Medicine territory. The Painted Drum is considered the final book in that series, and the events leading up to the making of the drum finally reveal more about the mysterious Fleur Pillager. In the present day, the drum calls to someone in a way that ultimately saves their life. And somehow (although this link was less clear to me), Faye comes to terms with a significant loss in her own past, and finds a new path.
I greatly enjoyed returning to Louise Erdrich’s world, and was equally caught up in Faye’s life despite the difference in setting and circumstances. Although I’ve finished the Love Medicine series, this will not be my last Erdrich novel.
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your
That sort of sums up the whole book, I think.
I like this book but was impatient with the plot. A tale about generations of people connected by
I started out by listening to it, but for some reason Anna Field’s reading sounded very unappealing, so I read it myself instead. I loved the style. The language was beautiful, and
In The Painted Drum we follow the story through the eyes of different
Faye Travers risks her moral rectitude and her career as an Estates agent by stealing an incredible Native American drum. It called to her with a single beat and she was overwhelmed by its mystical powers. Her grandmother was an Ojibwe and Faye takes the drum to return it to her tribe, its rightful owners. But before she hands it over, the drum works its magic on her. In a final healing catharsis, she is drawn to talking with her mother Elsie about the childhood death of her sister Netta. The novel concludes with Faye making life changing decisions.
There is also Bernard Shaawano, the grandson of the Ojibwe maker of the drum. He narrates the history of the drum, and we learn about the tragic life of Bernard's ancestor. He made the drum by following the instructions he received from his young daughter who sacrificed herself to save her mother, Anaquot. She came to her father in visions, and Erdrich’s masterful use of language and rhythm take us into the heart of a man’s grief for a daughter he loved so much he could not love the son who still lived.
The final section of the story relates the story of Ira and her three children. I won’t say more as this is the most powerful section of the book and I don’t want to spoil it. But here the drum comes full circle and, back in its rightful place, it throbs with life and hope.
Erdrich has a way of taking a reader deep into the mysteries that surround us: the soul of wolves; the breath of the trees; and the dead who live on in our dreams. Each word, each sentence, has layers of meaning. No matter how mundane the topic - a man mowing a lawn for his lover – everything is intricately linked and woven together, in much the same way that our individual lives are all part of the same fabric of existence. We are one with each other, Erdrich says, and we are one with all of life.
In The Painted Drum, her characters are flawed, but Erdrich does not judge them. Rather she shows them with unsentimental clarity and a deep understanding for the forces which drive people to do what they do. Erdrich's compassion is coupled with her skill and her wonderful imagination. Once again, she has written another masterpiece.
The real story then begins to unfold. The drum has touched several generations of Ojibwe since its creation by Bernard's grandfather who made it out of sorrow for the loss of his wife who left him for another man and the resulting death of his daughter. The story doesn't follow a straight line but wanders through the lives of the unfaithful wife, the older son, and most poignantly, the lives of three small children left by their mother in the cold and without food.
Erdrich's writing is not always easy to read; the convoluted story line of the drum is at times difficult to follow because Erdrich is mostly telling it backwards. The drum's effect on the lives of the characters is sometimes a bit of a stretch as Indian lore and beliefs intertwine with the realities of life. The book is the sharpest and most effective during the story of Shawnee, the nine-year old girl who walks her younger sister and brother to safety following a tragic house fire. The book is the least effective during the portions dealing with Faye and her relationship to a lover and her own feelings of inadequacy and guilt. I wish Erdich would concentrate more on stories and characters and less on what I call the "abstract." In short, Erdich is a great story teller and a master at phrasing. It's when she gets into the first-person narrative with rambling thoughts that she sometimes loses me and there is a bit too much of that - therefore a four, but still certainly well worth the effort it takes to read.
The Painted Drum speaks gently and compassionately of not only the grief of child loss, but of myriad other sorrows. That of parental abandonment, child abuse, poverty, addiction, war, loss of cultural traditions and the guilt that eats away a person from within. And she manages to do so without the least hint of a sermon. She speaks of the spirit world and the guidance some of us find there with deep respect. Thank you Ms. Erdrich; for an exquisite reading experience. I look forward to meeting you in the world of literature again soon.
Faye Travers, an estate appraiser who is part-Ojibwe, finds an amazing collection of American Indian artifacts in a home she is recently called to assess.
She alone hears a low note from a
In the second part of the tale, the story shifts to Bernard Shaawano, who lives on the reservation. Faye and her mother bring the drum "home." The drum is pivotal to Bernard's family history which he recounts
The third story opens with nine-year-old Shawnee desperately trying to save her younger brother and sister.
As the tale progresses, she hears something no one else can.....(the low beat of the drum)
Intertwined haunting tales.....
.............done in audio...at times maybe a bit confusing but soon explained in detail.
Many small details to appreciate....The tale of the Ojibwe painted drum is told in three parts that weave together through the past and the present.
Faye Travers, an estate appraiser who is part-Ojibwe, finds an amazing collection of American Indian artifacts in a home she is recently called to assess.
She alone hears a low note from a drum in the collection...subsequently she takes this drum.
In the second part of the tale, the story shifts to Bernard Shaawano, who lives on the reservation. Faye and her mother bring the drum "home." The drum is pivotal to Bernard's family history which he recounts
The third story opens with nine-year-old Shawnee desperately trying to save her younger brother and sister.
As the tale progresses, she hears something no one else can.....(the low beat of the drum)
Intertwined haunting tales.....
.............done in audio...at times maybe a bit confusing but soon explained in detail.
Many small details to appreciate....
With exquisite descriptions and poetry, Louise Erdrich has captured my imagination again. I will be on the look out for her other novels at the library and bookstore. The Painted Drum is truly inspired and beautiful.
I didn't like Faye. Especially the way she treated her neighbor Kurt.
The parts about how and why the drum was made was much more interesting. As well as Bernard, the