The Bingo Palace (P.S.) | 
 enlarge | Author: Louise Erdrich
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy New: $1.09
You Save: $12.86 (92%)
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Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 239754
Media: Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0061129755
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780061129759
ASIN: 0061129755
Publication Date: September 1, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
At the crossroads of his life, Lipsha Morrissey is summoned by his grandmother to return to the reservation. There, he falls in love for the very first time—with the beautiful Shawnee Ray, who's already considering a marriage proposal from Lipsha's wealthy entrepreneurial boss, Lyman Lamartine. But when all efforts to win Shawnee's affections go hopelessly awry, Lipsha seeks out his great-grandmother for a magical solution to his romantic dilemma—on sacred ground where a federally sanctioned bingo palace is slated for construction. Louise Erdrich's luminous novel The Bingo Palace is a tale of spiritual death and reawakening; of money, desperate love, and wild hope; and of the enduring power of cherished dreams.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 My first and only LE book and it stunk! July 22, 2008
pupucat (Minnesota on my way to California)
I don't know why I had the misfortune to pick up this Louise Erdrich book out of all her other ones at the bookstore.
This was one of the most painful books I have ever read. The writing was stilted and unnatural. I like books that are a bit sad and melancholy and depressing, but there was something about the complete and utter negativity of the story and the characters that was too much. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I felt no compassion for any of these unlikable characters. Their constant bad choices one after another. I knew from the beginning of the book that nothing would turn out well for any of the characters especially the hapless and directionless Lipsha.
 Literary Masterpiece May 6, 2007
B. Singer (South Florida)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
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 September 6, 2005
JC (Boston, MA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
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 September 9, 2004
Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
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.
 Not at the same level June 9, 2004
Manola Sommerfeld (California)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I fell in love with Louise Erdrich after reading her short story "Fleur". There was something gritty and seductive about her characters.Love Medicine, The Beet Queen, Tracks and this book are all part of a saga. The Bingo Palace is the last one in the series (i believe). There is a big sense of despair in the multiple narrators. It is almost like they know their lives cannot possibly get any better. I found the book depressing and a bit lackluster compared to the previous ones.
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