The Bingo Palace

by Louise Erdrich

Book Overview

At a crossroads in his life, Lipsha Morrissey is summoned by his grandmother. He returns to the reservation, and falls in love for the first time. Louise Erlich is the author of Love Medicine, Tracks and The Beet Queen.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060170808
• ISBN13: 9780060170806
• Release Date: January 1994
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 274 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

The Bingo Palace Torn

The dust jacket of this beautiful book was stuffed into a very tight package and arrived with a two inch tear on the front cover. It is very disappointing to see a book of this quality damaged by rough handling. Otherwise the book is perfect.

Literary Masterpiece

This being one of Louise Erdrich's earlier works, it forms the basis and framework for the wonderful works that follow. This purchase was a gift, as it is one of my very favorite books by any writer, nevermind by Louise Erdrich, and I have an older edition permanently placed in my front bookcase (for ease or re-reads). Please, read this great book and then what follows along with the connected works by another great writer, Winona Laduke, and you have weeks, months and years of wonderful literary experiences...which will stay with you forever...I don't really want to spoil the fun, except to say that both Erdrich and Laduke write beyond the Native American genre and world: they touch the human condition and offer the experience to the reader....

Very enjoyable but read the other books first

I just love Louise Erdrich's books. I didn't read her fiction until after I read her book "Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country", which is nonfiction. Anyway, I really enjoyed this book, and while it is somewhat impossible to describe the complete plot (and saying "Lipsha is in love with Shawnee" doesn't do it justice), Lipsha is developed into a sympathetic figure, and Lyman is also rounded out more. It's amazing how LE can spin an interesting narrative out of (mostly) ordinary events. I would love to read more about Lipsha and the other, younger members of the families. They seem so real now, after reading the other books such as "Tracks", "Love Medicine", etc.

Richly told, but too mythic

Erdrich's latest novel of modern native American life centers on a bright, but aimless young man. Lipsha Morrisey is adrift, one foot in America, one on the North Dakota reservation. Son of a crazy woman and a convict, the tribe has given up on the young man who once showed promise - a product of families recalled from Erdrich's previous books "(Love Medicine," "The Beet Queen," "Tracks"). Summoned back to the reservation by his grandmother for reasons that never come clear - a last chance to make something of himself as an Indian? Lipsha falls in love with the beautiful Shawnee Ray, who's slated to marry the tribal entrepreneur, her son's father, Lyman Lamartine. Lyman is handsome, muscled, skilled in tribal traditions, worldly wealthy and ambitious for tribal power and American success. He is all that Lipsha is not. But Lipsha believes the strength of his love is a match for all of Lyman's assets. Endowed with his mother's luck, granted him in a vision devoid of love, Lipsha begins to win at Bingo. For Shawnee Ray he amasses unearned wealth, squanders his spiritual power, dreams of greatness in his future, and wastes his present in floundering and backsliding. Although Lipsha's present is the primary focus, the novel dips into the past with chapters centered around other tribal members including both his grandmothers, his mother, Lyman, Shawnee Ray, and Zelda Kashpaw,Lipsha's aunt and Shawnee's self-appointed guardian. There's also a Greek Chorus sort of voice that speaks with the whole tribe's sorrowful wisdom. This organization keeps a certain distance between the novel and the reader. Lipsha's obsession widens the gulf. His hunger for Shawnee Ray so overwhelms that it bores. Shawnee becomes the focus of Lipsha's every act but there's so little contact between them that passion never develops into love. Lipsha never develops at all. Erdrich's prose is vivid and spare, always flowing, moving. Every sentence seems infused with the long history, hardship and spiritual mystery of Indian life. Her characters are enigmatic and firmly anchored in the Dakota setting. But for all this richness, the story never connects, remaining more mysterious than moving. Readers of her earlier novels, who can place this one in a wider context, should enjoy the book more than new readers who may be left cold by too-brief glimpses into too many hearts.

Unexpected enjoyment in an off-the-wall world

I had not expected to like this book... when I began it, I was sure that I would have to force myself to the end because I tend to like the romantic happily-ever-after sort of story, but once I began, Erdrich caught me in the absurdities of the world of Lipsha. I have read many reviews that do not find Lipsha an especially likable character, but I liked him despite the fact that he was the sort who would instinctively choose the wrong way to do anything. The sheer absurdity of Erdrich's work, including a food fight in Dairy Queen between romantic rivals, a vision quest that brought forth a talking skunk, and a ghostly mother who wanted the T-bird that her insurance money bought, adds just enough humor to make even the defeats of Lipsha amusing rather than tragic. The book is worth a try, especially if seen in terms of Lipsha's returning home to find the kinship with the land that he had lost -- a slow healing process. The skunk tells him, "It ain't real estate," and at the base of all the other adventures he begins to realize this, but as with so many young people, the discovery is slow coming and fraught with disasters