Dec 30, 2009

Fleur | Critical Overview

Louise Erdrich has been a popular novelist and a critical success since the publication of her first novel Love Medicine in 1984. “Fleur,” which was in draft form during Erdrich’s college days, gained early praise from Erdrich’s professor and future husband Michael Dorris. As Ruth Rosenberg quotes Dorris in her entry on Erdrich for the Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 152: “[‘Fleur’] was alternately hilarious and terribly sad, a building swirl of impressions that clung to the imagination with incredible power.” Critics tended to agree; the story was...