RaveThe Boston GlobeStories within stories, just as the past exists inside the present. Stories told by their characters — to each other, to themselves — until storytelling becomes a form of communion that uses language to transcend language. In its structure The Plague of Doves — not really a novel but a collection of linked stories — embodies this idea … Erdrich's ear is as sharp as her eye. Her diction runs the gamut from ‘fixy’ through ‘opinionate’ to ‘prognathic’ and ‘aspergillum.’ Her characters' voices — whether narrating, arguing, grieving, or just chewing the fat — are as distinct and evocative as the varied instruments of a full orchestra … The stories told by her characters offer pleasures of language, of humor, of sheer narrative momentum, that shine even in the darkest moments of the book. Perhaps these pleasures cannot exist without the darkness, just as the present cannot exist without the past.
