The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

Louise Erdrich weaves an intricate and detailed story of a woman living her life as a priest among the Ojibwe people. While Erdrich's prose is beautiful and the tale fascinating and enjoyable, it is Anna Fields's reading, coupled with the story's slow beginning, that makes the first two hours a chore. As Erdrich's plot finally comes to life, so does Fields's performance, keeping the listener engrossed as the characters' lives unfold over the next 50 years. Fields modifies her voice for each character without going overboard, bringing depth and color to Erdrich's rich prose. The book and performance as a whole overcome the slow start. H.L.S. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 1, 2001
Erdrich seems to be inhabiting her characters, so intense and viscerally rendered are her portrayals. Her prose shimmers: a piano being carried across the plains is "an ebony locust." This novel will be remembered for a cornucopia of set pieces, all bizarre and stunning: wounded and taken hostage by a bank robber and pinned to the running board of his Overland automobile, Agnes, "her leg a flare of blood," briefly touches hands with her astonished lover as the car crosses his path; old man Nanapush, impaled on fish hooks that pin him to a boat that's hitched to the antlers of a wounded moose, careens through the woods in delirious exhaustion. Writing with subtle compassion and magical imagination, Erdrich has done justice to the complexities of existence in general and Native American life in particular. First serial selections in the New Yorker have whetted appetites for this novel, and picks by BOMC and QPB, major ad/promo and an author tour will give it wide exposure.

July 2, 2001
Erdrich renders her North Dakota world of the Ojibwe with a lyrical and richly metaphorical prose style. Her narrative is interspersed with dozens of comic, tragic and all-too-human stories that illuminate her lively, complex and often bizarre Ojibwe people and the priests who come to convert them and minister to their needs. She compassionately portrays Father Damien (née Agnes DeWitt) through worldly and spiritual joy, confusion and crisis. Erdrich commingles and explores many world views as Father Damien's life and thought are continually and profoundly reshaped by the lives, events, rites and rituals of the parishioners who come to love him so deeply. But some of the book's strengths become problems for listeners—e.g., complicated family relations, complex exposition, confusing jumps back and forth between different time frames throughout an entire century. Fields has a pleasing voice, a fine feel for the material and the characters and a knack for low-key dramatization. But she has a narrow vocal range that becomes tiresome through 14.5 hours of tape. Based on the HarperCollins hardcover.

December 20, 2000
Already thrice excerpted in The New Yorker, this work features Father Damien, devoted servant of the Ojibwa people, whose past is catching up with him. FREDRIKSSON, Marianne.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.