Entanglement 
 This readable, often entertaining, but rather grueling novel is about a marriage unraveling. A common enough occurrence in fiction as in life; what raises it above the ordinary is the detail, the truth of the emotional entanglement, and how the story is told. 
 There is no doubt that Erdrich wrote this out of painful personal experience, and the book's details make it difficult not to see it as somewhat autobiographical. The protagonist Irene America, like Erdrich herself, is a writer of Native American descent, though a cultural historian rather than a novelist. She is bound up in the creative work of her husband Gil, also of Native blood, an artist of some fame whose "America" series consists of a series of portraits willingly posed by his wife, some beautiful, some angry, some demeaning. They live in Minneapolis and have three school-age children. The parallels with Erdrich's own marriage to the late Michael Dorris, with whom she collaborated on many of her earlier novels, are inescapable, but the emotional authenticity is palpable. 
 For although Irene confesses early on that she hates Gil, she also seems to need him--as a provider, a sparring partner, an artistic presence, a lover; even at the worst of times, she enters into their love-making with a passionate intensity that leaves them both bruised. Although capable of unpredictable acts of violence, Gil devotes himself constantly to winning back Irene's love, cooking for her, buying her presents, appealing to her sense of humor. "What he really thought was that there would come a moment where he could truly reach Irene and that moment would change everything." What keeps one reading, hoping, excusing, is the conviction that there is so much in this marriage that ought to be saved. Yet neither is blameless. Gil's art seems to feed on the difficulties between them; he seems to need antagonism in order to paint. Irene herself is close to being an alcoholic, her work on the 19th-century painter George Catlin is at a standstill, and she is dangerously devious 
 This deviousness is exemplified in the main narrative gimmick of the novel. Knowing that Gil suspects her of infidelity and convinced that she is reading her diary, Irene keeps two journals: a red diary hidden where she knows he can still find it, and a blue diary locked in a bank vault. I do not feel the device works. The red diary, which Irene uses to manipulate Gil, also manipulates the reader, although it parallels the way any writer distorts reality to turn it into fiction. The blue diary is used too seldom to justify its existence. Together, they are a vaguely postmodern device that is not really followed through. Most of the story is not told through these diaries, but in a third voice, which is a curious mixture of omniscience and speculation; the end of the book will reveal whose voice this is. By this time, though, the structure of the novel has broken down into disconnected sections. Part I is 142 pages, Part II is only 69, Parts III through V and the epilogue average 7 pages each. Perhaps this collapse of continuity is intentional, but it is also shocking. Yet it keeps one reading, accelerating towards a surprising yet inevitable end. 
 Erdrich writes in blood, tears, anger, and above all loss. She recalls not only pain, but the exultation of art, the desperation of love, and the unexpected release of laughter. The result may not be neatly shaped or comfortably contained, yet it feels authentic, and that is its saving grace.