The Master Butchers Singing Club: A Novel

This book was recommended by my book club. I've found that it is difficult to write about this very well-written, poignant and captivating story without the plot seeming to be a bit "soap opera"ish, but trust me, it is anything but! Be that as it may, I would encourage any serious reader to immerse yourself in the story, for it is well worth the time to read. I would have liked to give it a 4.5 rating, as I can't say that it is the best book I've read in the last year, but it comes close. I couldn't give it a 4, because that wouldn't rate it high enough.

The Master Butchers Singing Club is very little about singing and very much about the privations of the years between WWI and WWII in the upper Midwestern United States. It begins with the story of a German soldier who survives WWI and returns home to marry his fallen best friend's pregnant girlfriend, Eva, to fulfill his promise to his dying friend to take care of her. They fall in love and have three more boys while he studies with his father to learn the family's trade. When Fidelis first encounters a slice of American bread sent in a "care package" to a friend, he is amazed that this slice is "shaped with a precision that could only be the work of fanatics." He becomes enamored of a society so inventive that they would create machines to produce such commonplace items as a loaf of bread. Fidelis eventually boards the RMS Mauritania and migrates to the United States with a suitcase full of his father's "miraculous smoked sausages" to sell in order to pay his way across the United States to Seattle, where the bread was produced. However, he sells his last sausage in Argus, North Dakota, and settles there, working for the best butcher in town to establish his own reputation as a master butcher. Once he has settled, Fidelis sends for Eva and the boys.

In Chapter 2, we meet Delphine, a young woman who hasn't yet come to terms with her own youth of emotional deprivation with a drunken father and sans a mother whose face she's never seen. Argus was a town small enough that everyone knows everyone else's business, All she ever wanted was to escape to where her father wasn't a constant embarrassment and disappointment to her. So she runs off with a circus performer, Cypriani.

Eventually, Delphine returns home with Cypriani and finds employment at Fidelis' butcher shop. She and Eva become close friends, and Delphine becomes an integral part of the family.

The characters in this book are very well developed, and each plays an important part in the family's life. There is a bit of everything in the book - from mystery to history to romance - and throughout it all, Ms. Erdrich's writing genius keeps the reader captivated. The only criticism I would have for the book is that a translation of the few German passages would be appreciated.

As soon as I finished this book, I started over on the first page to scan through the story and stopped to re-read sections to fully savor the connections and events over again. Delphine is a character I will remember for a long time. She is a true survivor, "No matter what they might have heard at the lumberyard, she wanted to give the impression of an extremely respectable woman, but not one who could not afford, say, a hat with a little green feather. A plain person. Trustworthy. Not a person who had a murderer for a best friend or who'd lived with a vaudeville acrobat or who had a gabby old souse for a father. Delphine, she wanted people to say of her, she's awfully quick, but she's solid and reliable." The account of Eva and Delphine in the night garden drinking beer while they set the beer out to catch slugs is tender and funny and so full of life and death that it alone makes the book a treasure to read. I checked this book out of the library but I am going to order it. I want to keep these characters around, not return them.

Many have written to praise this book, and I too give it five stars. I am adding my two cents worth here because I want to encourage you committed readers to try books on CD. I "read" this book by Erdrich and also her "A Plague of Doves" on CD. If you have not read a book this way, you are in for a treat. The best of the aural books [which are NOT abridged in any way] are read by professional actors. "A Plague of Doves" is one of these. Every character is alive and has a voice. It is a wonderful experience. In the case of TMBSC Erdrich reads the book herself. Her voice is too soft and her reading not as nuanced as a trained actor. Still, is is a good way to take in the story. Some authors do fine with their own work: Stephen King does an excellent job reading his own stories. You do not need a long commute or car trip to do this. What we hear stays as firmly fixed in our brains as what we read with our eyes. We can come back to it whether it is on our bedside table or in the CD player of our car. The local libraries have books on CD. Try this!

Great story and climax but the denouement was a bit of a let down (one reader called it "disarrayed", I would agree). Still, it is a lovely, thought-provoking book and well worth 4 stars. It had a touch of mystery and the unexpected. I think what I found most interesting of all was that the seemingly humorous inclusion of the carnival style "balancing" act in the begining of the novel is really, in my mind, an underlying theme for the whole book. For every act of evil, there is an act of good; for each death, new life or new life paths. Another writer would have taken the same novel and made a tearjerker. But in Erdrich's hands, this otherwise somber tale is imbued with a sense of hope that improves the story. This book reminded me a bit of Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Dreams but with a writing style that is more lyrical and sophisticated, 'showing' more than 'telling'.

I read this novel in two days. It would have been one day, but I had a houseguest in the form of a little dog who had to be walked. This story of time in the Dakotas during the period between World War One and World War Two and after was compelling. How could you not love a writer who describes a house plant as ferociously colorful? Erdrich's style is thick with description, but doesn't bore. It sets the stage. The Master Butcher arrives in the US for opportunity and heads west. His skill as a Master Butcher from Europe is his path to success. His other gift is singing, so he enlists the time of other men in the community to join him and drink a lot of beer. Everything he does and has become is colored by his past as an austro-German in the war. The author does a masterful job setting the stage and describing a time in our history and illustrates how our pasts inform our lives.

The book club I belong to had decided to read this book. After the first 50 pages, I was bored to tears. However, once the initial backdrop is established, the story started to really get good.

The book is set in post WWI where a soldier from Germany comes to America and sells sausages in North Dakota. At the same time, he crosses paths with another woman whose own life has been trying and difficult. Thru cirmcumstance, the lives of these two intertwine and the author does a good job of establishing real, three dimensional characters. Additionally, Erdrich masterfully describes the challenges of the late 20's and early 30's, before the modern conveniences we have so grown accustomed to.

After writing a moving piece, Erdrich blows the reader away with a jaw dropping conclusion that will leave you speechless.

When I was about half-way through this book, I really thought I'd be rating it five stars. I loved the depth of the characters. It's something that isn't seen in a lot of books, but Delphine and Cyprian seemed so human and poignant. When I first started the book, I admit, I was disappointed that I didn't get to see more of Fidelis and Eva's early relationship, but I excused it, telling myself that the story wasn't about how they came into each other's lives.

Somewhere beyond the halfway point, however, I began feeling cheated. I felt that every event which I'd begun to anticipate because the author was building up the anticipation, simply didn't pay off. I'd be awaiting something, and then suddenly months had gone by. And then years. The latter half of the book felt as if it was just fast-forwarded, and I got a few glimpses of various events that frankly weren't as meaningful to me as those I didn't get to see. I still feel it needs a high rating for how engrossing I initially found it and how real the characters were, but as a story, it was disappointing.