The Sentence

 The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, 387 pages.

This is the kind of book that when I reach the end I have a hard time going back and describing what it was about, but here's an approximate. Tookie works at a small bookstore in Minneapolis (trivia, it's a real life bookstore actually owned by the author of this book, who is a fairly minor character) and over the course of a year she is haunted there by the ghost of one of their most persistent customers. The year this book covers is All Souls Day 2019-2020, which means in addition to dealing with the haunting and a number of personal issues, Tookie is also surviving the COVID-19 pandemic and the political upheaval after George Floyd is murdered in her city. 

This book feels almost super-real, it transports you to somewhere else.  The blurb for the book says it "asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book." which isn't inaccurate, but also doesn't feel like the full story. This is a think-y book, often full of sadness and righteous outrage, but it never feels dense. It simply is. As usual, reading Louise Erdrich is a treat, and if I can't describe this book properly you'll have to read it yourself to find out.