Married.....with children.

Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich

This is the first book I've read by Louise Erdrich. I've heard about her writing and when I read a review of this book, her newest, I couldn't wait to receive it from Amazon. What I wish I had known before I read it was that Louise Erdrich had a tumultuous marriage with her late husband, Michael Doris, another author, (who committed suicide in 1997), that might or might not have given her basis for the story in this book. I might have looked at the characters, at the story as a whole, differently if I had known and might have liked it more.

In Shadow Tag, we enter the lives of Gil and Irene and their 3 children, brilliant 14 year old Florian, 11 year old Reil, and 6 yr.old Stoney....all observers of their parents' intense, dangerous unravelling of their marriage. Irene has discovered that Gil has been secretly reading her diary and in her anger at the lack of privacy thrust upon her, she decides to keep a second diary in which the truths of her thoughts are recorded and stashed away in a safe deposit box at the bank. The diary that Gil reads, kept in a drawer in the basement, is filled with lies that Irene concocts to drive Gil mad, in hopes that he will finally leave her. Gil is an artist who has found fame by painting Irene in dark, sometimes humiliating poses, all throughout their marriage. He is a moody, sometimes abusive personality who is madly and jealously in love with Irene, wanting to possess her in every possible way. Irene, working on her doctoral thesis on an Indian artist, fell out of love with Gil a long time ago. She's become an alcoholic and is desperate to protect her children from the fury of their father. Thus the deceit in one of the diaries and the warped 'game-playing' that goes on behind closed doors.

It's a very interesting concept, that of the 2 diaries, but I felt the story was a bit thin for some reason. Had I known that Erdrich was throwing in some half-truths here and there, I might have paid more attention. As is, the book left me feeling less than thrilled. I didn't like Gil or Irene and their children didn't seem believable to me. But the story flowed and moved quickly toward a tragic ending, not a complete surprise, but semi-satisfying nevertheless.

And that's what I have to say about that.