Opinions of a Wolf

A previously incarcerated Indigenous woman loves her job at an independent bookstore focused on Indigenous literature right up until the store’s most annoying customer dies and begins haunting it.

Summary:
A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading with murderous attention, must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation, and furious reckoning.

Review:
It’s a good thing I didn’t see that this book is magical realism or I wouldn’t have picked it up. You see, I had a serious misunderstanding of what magical realism is and thought I didn’t like it. In fact, I like it very much. I only wish I had first been introduced to it by the excellent explanation from Master Class originally. I’m excited that this book has helped me see past the magical realism label.

The thing that I love structurally about this book is how the title has so many different meanings. There’s the sentence that Tookie serves for her crime. There’s the sentence found within the book that Flora is reading when she dies. And there’s many other sentences throughout the book. I love when one title has many meanings.

The book starts with Tookie thinking back briefly on her incarceration and what landed her there. Part of what made the beginning so readable was how Tookie told this story. It was like speaking with a friend about a piece of their past. Raw and real but quick and to the point. It got me invested in the book right away. Then we jump to Tookie’s present, working in the bookstore, and the haunting, and this is utterly engaging right away as well. Tookie is flawed but so relatable. I think most readers will find her to be this way because she’s such a huge reader herself.

I also found her relatable because she’s in long-term recovery. I like how she sometimes thinks about how she was but it’s not like any single bad day gives her an urge she has to fight. A lot of times in literature and movies only early sobriety is shown, and the fact is, the experience in long-term recovery is different. I was so glad to see that in Tookie, and to see her breaking the multi-generational disease. But I also appreciated the very realistic depiction of her being concerned about talking about the haunting with her husband, Pollux, for fear he would think she had relapsed. I also should mention that both Tookie and her niece are bisexual. Their sexual fluidity is never judged or questioned. It’s just a part of who they are, which I really appreciated.

The book centers around a difficult question that it doesn’t provide answers for. Flora is a “wannabe Indian.” She’s a white woman who claims Indigenous heritage based on one photo she says is of a great-grandparent. The Indigenous community is dubious but doesn’t want to tell her she can’t belong. She spends much of her life working for the betterment of Indigenous people, including even taking in an unhoused teenager and caring for her so much that when she’s grown she refers to her as mother. So everyone has complex feelings about her. There are also some scenes that show white people behaving in offensive ways and smoothly depict how hard it is for Indigenous people to deal with these aggressions on a regular basis. One that really stuck in my mind was the white woman who shows up at the Indigenous bookstore and talks about her grandmother reassembling Indigenous bones she found on her land and winning a blue ribbon for it. She doesn’t understand why this is offensive to the Indigenous people she’s speaking with. To me the examples like this throughout the book demonstrate two types of white people who are hurtful to Indigenous people. The book is never preachy with these scenes. They come across as very realistic depictions of, unfortunately, regular interactions between Indigenous people and white people. If you yourself aren’t sure why these two types of interactions are hurtful, then I think this book would show you.

I wasn’t sure how I would feel reading a fictional book set during the first year of the pandemic. Overall, even though Tookie’s experiences and mine were different from each other (she was much older than me and had an essential worker, public facing job), I still found it realistic and relatable. The book never dwelled too much on any individual aspect of the pandemic but had scenes that were necessary reminders of how things were in the early days, like when Tookie goes to the grocery store to stock up just in case and ends up buying the best she can from what’s left, such as a tube of cookie dough. Similarly, Minneapolis was where George Floyd was killed and followed by the protests that spread throughout the country in 2020, and so this had to be a part of the book. At the start of the book it’s established that Tookie’s husband, Pollux, is who actually arrested her. By the time she was out of prison, he had left the tribal police force. But her household still must deal with the complex situation of having a previously incarcerated person and an ex-cop in the same household during this tumultuous time. There’s also the nice addition of Pollux’s niece, Hetta, living with them and, as a young person, being more involved in the protests. This thoughtful characterization allowed for multiple perspectives on the protests. For example, while there is support, there is also sadness and concern about the small businesses being impacted.

In spite of all that comes in the middle, the last part of the book deals mainly with Tookie’s relationship with Pollux and Tookie dealing with Flora’s ghost. This provides closure even while the reader knows the difficulties didn’t end in November 2020. In many ways I found this to be a story about relationships and reconciliation.

Overall, this is a strong piece of contemporary magical realism. If you’re ready to read a book featuring the pandemic while not being about the pandemic itself, this is a great place to begin.

If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!

4 out of 5 stars

Length: 387 pages – average but on the longer side

Source: Library

Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)

Get the Reading Group / Book Club Discussion Guide
A beautifully graphic designed 2 page PDF that contains: 1 icebreaker, 9 discussion questions arranged from least to most challenging, 1 wrap-up question, and 3 read-a-like book suggestions
View a list of all my Discussion Guides.