In the middle of US author Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, set in the farming communities of Tabor, North Dakota, star-crossed teens Hugo Dumach and the fantastically named Kismet Poe are forced to part. The hilariously quixotic Hugo takes comfort in a quilt, a keepsake his beloved has left him:
“It [was] sewed out of her T-shirts [and] held a history of her […] The first T-shirts she wore were stamped with unicorns, dolphins, white-maned ponies, and ballet dancers. Next came the Powerpuff Girls and Sailor Moon. Harry Potter. Her favourite cereals. The Lucky Charms leprechaun. Tony the Tiger. The Lord of the Rings. Rihanna. Pink. Katy Perry. Destiny’s Child. Beyoncé. There was an NDSU bison. A Golden Gopher, a Husky. Her college picks.”
The bustling and brightly coloured heterogeneity here is mirrored in The Mighty Red at large. Following a variety of perspectives, it is part romcom, part overblown family saga, part cli-fi warning, part absurdist heist, part small-town satire, all tumbling out amid the turmoil of the 2008 financial crash.
The dominant romantic plot is constructed round a love triangle involving Kismet, Gary and Hugo. Hailing from a “rattled, scratching, always-in-debt” family, Kismet is a gothy and gifted teenager, destined for greatness beyond the town’s limits, at least as far as her sugar beet hauler mother, Crystal, is concerned. Crystal’s aspirations are dashed when Kismet succumbs to the allures of troubled jock-with-a-heart Gary Geist. He’s the son of the wealthiest landowning family around; indeed, the Geists own the farm on which Crystal works. Gary haphazardly proposes to Kismet in a silly set piece involving an errant champagne cork. Against her better judgment, mesmerised by his inscrutable vulnerability, Kismet accepts.
Kismet finds herself a conflicted and reluctant bride, not only due to the presence of her mother-in-law, high-pitched Winnie Geist, but also because of the intractable “psychic magnetism” she feels towards nerdy Hugo. Much of the central act of the novel focuses on Kismet’s attempts to quiet the unease she feels as a new member of the Geist household, and her tortured attempts to make her marriage work. Throughout, Kismet’s reading of Madame Bovary – a present from Hugo – is comically symbolic.
It’s not only Kismet and Gary’s relationship that is on the rocks: Crystal’s long-term partner, Martin, is an itinerant theatre arts teacher whose self-absorption and expensive tastes are in sharp contrast with Crystal’s frugality and vaunted selflessness. Martin’s fiscal carelessness reaches outlandish proportions when he seemingly absconds with the local church’s renovation fund, leaving innocent Crystal and Kismet as town pariahs.
Within this gossipy and garrulous text, locals debate Crystal’s culpability in fevered whispers and yelps. But there are even bigger debates among the residents: ideological discussion about the nature of landownership, which is pertinent as many of the characters have First Nations heritage; and heated conversation about the use of pesticides and their deleterious effect on the town’s richly described wildlife.
With its environmental concerns, its realist commitment to showcasing the existential threats faced by contemporary farmers, and its gentle send-up of parochialism, the novel seemed to me a curious mashup of The Archers and Schitt’s Creek. Like both, it is packed to bursting with peripheral characters, from Hugo’s feral little sisters, Trudy and Gerta, to the sinister priest Father Flirty, who “was anything but”. Subplots are plentiful, too, most notably an accident involving Gary and his sporty stooges, “a thing nobody wants to talk about or think about”.
Arguably, there’s a bit too much going on here, and the reader isn’t given much help to discern what really matters, or indeed what we might need to dwell on, as the book sprints toward its rather skittish and unsatisfying denouement. Some pivotal scenes are so protracted and overblown that the tension slackens, while the crowded design and lurching plotting doesn’t allow for sufficiently engaging character growth to pull the reader through.
But the narrative voice is the redeeming quality. It takes a while for the reader to settle into storytelling as tonally mixed as Kismet’s quilt, but Erdrich’s achievement is pretty remarkable: a voice with brio and lightness that wends and weaves, as the titular river does, between modes and moods. It’s unpredictable and multifaceted, whether sharing an anecdote about Gary taking questionable dick pics or revelling in the high camp of book group blow-ups about Eat, Pray, Love. It’s just as natural conveying Kismet’s romantic reveries while she watches swallows in “their intricate blur of flight”. In a moment of farcical desperation and self-punishment, lovelorn Hugo Tasers himself after clumsily aiding his romantic rival – but then says, as if commenting on Erdrich’s mercurial style itself: “I feel unusually upbeat and cheerful! Anything is possible!”
• The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich is published by Corsair (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
