Review: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My boyfriend has been trying to get me to read Erdrich for a year now. I don't know why I didn't listen to him earlier, because Erdrich has everything I could possibly want on my author wishlist: she's a woman writing magical realism from the perspective of a minority who often incorporates gender issues into her stories and comes highly regarded as a master of prose. And is she ever! This is easily the best book I've read so far this year in terms of beauty of prose and emotional power of the story.

"The Last Report of the Miracles at Little No Horse" is a strange place to start with Erdrich, though. From what I understand, many of Erdrich's novels take place in an Ojibwe (Native American) community in North Dakota, so characters appear and re-appear in different novels. And this novel revolves around a huge spoiler for the rest of those novels, and you can't talk about the book without talking about this reveal, so here goes: the white priest for the community is a woman, and has been masquerading as a man (by the end of her/his life) for about 70 years.

Father Damien Modeste, also known as Agnes, has been writing to the Pope since he became a priest, and finally, it seems, the Pope has answered as Modeste nears the end of his life. A young priest has come to investigate the miracles of Sister Leopolda, an Ojibwe woman who became a Catholic nun (and often the subject of Modeste's letters), and consider her for canonization.

Modeste is old, long-winded, and absent-minded, so the young priest finds his job surprisingly difficult. Modeste alternately rambles about moments in his life and becomes lost in nostalgic reminiscence, and the reader is privy to it all. He remembers the love he has always had for both God and music, looks fondly on his life prior to the priesthood, considers his changing relationship to religion as he becomes integrated in the Ojibwe community.

I say "he" because Erdrich has cast Modeste as a character who is comfortable with ambiguity. He is perfectly at home entertaining two conflicting ideas and making a whole from those disparate parts without destroying or betraying either. This is true for his gender and his religion. There are moments where Modeste is a man, and he is a he; there are moments when Agnes is a woman, and she is a she. Both exist within the character, and each comes through in varying degrees at varying moments, and Agnes/Modeste is not bothered by it at all. Agnes grew up Catholic and maintains that love for God throughout her life, and as she becomes Modeste, she incorporates Ojibwe beliefs into her Catholicism (and converts Ojibwe by incorporating Catholicism into their existing beliefs).

Erdrich has mastered elegant nuance of character, of ideology. Her imagery is enchanting; the story is full of descriptions of nature and characters that are beautifully striking. Novels are often described as tapestries and I think that description is nowhere more fitting than with Erdrich - this book is a warmly hand-woven tapestry carefully made and illustrated with an expert's detailing, but still full of charm and heart. It evokes a natural garden, lovingly planted but allowed to grow almost wild with only a touch of carefully-placed cultivation and love. Read this, or some other Erdrich book, if you want to be woven into that tapestry and grow in that garden and in the end be wrenched out of it and it hurts to leave but you can see the beautiful whole.

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