Shadow Tag

When I first heard the premise of Louise Erdrich's new novel Shadow Tag, I thought, oooh, that sounds good. Wife keeps diary. Wife finds out that husband is secretly reading her diary. Wife begins to plant lies in diary to mess with the husband. That could make for good drama, right? Well, it does, but not in the juicy, soap opera-like way I thought it might. Although I've never read Erdrich before, I guess I should have known that her writing would never be soap opera-like in any way. Take two alcoholics with an already shaky and dysfunctional marriage and add this element of suspicion to a possessive, needy, abusive husband and you have a recipe for disaster. What follows is like a horrible train wreck that you just can't look away from. Although I found it to be very dark, disturbing, shocking, and sad, I also found it an engrossing and oddly satisfying read.