Have I Read My Best Book of 2022?

I think I may have read my best book of 2022. If not, then in the top three. It is The Sentence by Louis Erdrich. This is the first book I've read by Erdrich, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for fiction. I love prize winners. I hope some of their shininess rubs off on me! The title connotes a prison sentence the main character, Tookie, has served, but it also refers to a sentence written by Proust crucial for solving ghostly problems. An amazingly clever set of bookends at the beginning and end. The book probably used "sentence" in other ways that I didn't even catch. Everything in the book feels complex and nuanced. I have little exposure to indigenous Americans other than westerns and learning we've broken every treaty the U.S. made with them. The book has both tragedy and laugh-out-loud moments. One is an interaction between the indigenous Tookie and a woman seeking validation for being "sensitive." I will be reading more of Louise Erdrich.

I also read Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and The Legacy of Trauma by Galit Atlas. Atlas, a therapist, proposes that unprocessed trauma is carried in the body and behavior from the victims to their descendants, poisoning their lives. It is filed under Psychology, but it reads like a memoir. She draws from her life and her patients to expound on her ideas. She makes a compelling case. I found myself gaining awareness of generational trauma. For a book that discusses the Holocaust, childhood abuse, suicide, and other sorrows, it left me feeling hopeful.

This was a three-book week. I finished Carved in Ebony: Lessons From Women Who Shape Us by Jasmine L. Holmes. Holmes is a black woman writing about influential, but sometimes obscure, historic black women who were unknown to me. Holmes chose well. These women were teachers, missionaries, and activists personally risking much to further others. It was a Christmas gift to me that was worth the time to read, and it expanded my understanding.