The Master Butchers Singing Club: A Novel

A chronicle of immigrants in a small town that brings memories of life for those of us that grew up in such a place. The characters are believable and the reader can look into their lives that are sometimes quirky, but believable.

The Master Butchers Singing Club (P.S.)
The Butcher in this story by Louise Erdrich is a highly trained butcher by profession, with a background in the German military as well, who traveled to the US after the war, carrying sausages and his set of knives, and built a new business, a family and a community of friends in the US. His story is told by his wife and it is a rich story of the immigrant community, with characters I feel glad to have known.

A friend recommended this author so I started with some earlier works and was very intrigued. Love the way she brings in characters from other books, kind of liking meeting up with an old friends. The characters are very realistic in my opinion.

This was a book club recommendation which I thoroughly enjoyed. It held my attention throughout and everything sounded so real I wondered if it could be non- fiction. I especially liked the revelations at the end - totally unexpected.

Spong is the most challenging and yet insightful writer of "religious" matters that I have read.

He makes sense of substantive religious and theological issues that have bothered me for years and does so in a clear and compelling manner, He would be most confronting to those who cling to traditional theological ideas = the "literalists" and "conservatives" would not enjoy any of his publications but they should read them all.

Compulsory reading for thinking Christians.

This book follows a large number of characters: the master butcher Fidelis Waldvogel; his wife, Eva; motherless Delphine who has returned to her upper mid-western hometown and finds herself stuck; her partner, Cyprian, who loves her but prefers men; Delphine’s alcoholic father, who may have killed three people- but he can’t remember; Delphine’s best friend, Clarisse, who is the undertaker and is being sexually harassed by the sheriff; Step-and-a-Half, a junk collecting woman who has secrets; and the Waldvogel’s four sons. The story follows their lives and relationships from 1918 to 1954, entangled with each other in so many ways. One of the things that takes center stage in the book is the predicament of German-Americans as Hitler rose to power and during WW 2. There were divided loyalties, as the Waldvogel family shows. Families were torn apart as they were forced to choose between nation and family, and even fight family member to family member.

I’m of two minds about this book. On the one hand, the prose is just so lovely that reading it was a joy. It’s like looking through a jewel box. But on the other hand, despite the length, a lot of the characters seem to be fairly impenetrable. Delphine, even though she is the main character, we seem to only skim the surface of. Delphine’s best friend has a huge event happen to her, but the effect in the story is negligible. The reveal at the end is momentous, but we have no idea WHY Mazarine’s mother did what she did years before Mazarine was born. Was she unaware of her state? Did she not care? How did Mazarine manage to survive her lack of care? The book is not boring- far from it- but it seems to lack something. In the end, I wanted to know more about these people than the author gave us.

The title of The Master Butcher’s Singing Club (TMBS) is a mouthful. I can almost imagine the author, Louise Erdrich, initially conceiving the title as one of these closed compound German nouns. However, according to Google Translate, that would come out as three words--Der Fleischermeister Gesangsverein.

The title has two main connotations. The first is the attempt to bridge the Old World and the New. The club was one that the male protagonist, Fidelis Waldvogel, had in his home in Germany. The one he has in his new home in is only nominally a master butchers‘ club simply because there aren’t many to be had. The other is that the book itself, with its many characters and multiplicity of subplots, is a kind of chorus, with two main voices and many supporting ones. The latter is an arguable weakness in the book, making it too disparate and sprawling. The subplot involving the romantic interest that Hock, the town sheriff, took in Clarice, an undertaker and old friend of Daphne, seems a particularly unncessary diversion.

The two main voices are Fidelis and Daphne Watzka. Fidelis was a WWI sniper who married Eva, the pregnant fiancee of a comrade-in-arms. Dismayed by the economic chaos of Weimar Germany, he seeks a new life in America and settles in Argus, North Dakota, which is as far as his money takes him. He eventually starts his own butcher shop and sends for Eva and Franz, the biological son of his comrade who he treats as his own son. Daphne is a native of Argus who left town while young and is part of a two-person acrobat act. She returns to town to visit her alcoholic father, Roy, and, while cleaning up, discovers three bodies in his basement, the memory of which is ostensibly lost in the alcohol-created lacunae of his memory. There is an immediate spark between them and the resolution of the romantic tension between them takes a long time. It’s complicated by such factors and the genuine affection of Fidelis towards Eva and Daphne’s friendship with her.

The individual characters are often quite good. Fidelis‘ work as a sniper required deliberateness and patience and we get that loud and clear in all his dealings. Roy’s struggle with his alcoholism was also engagingly done. The character of Daphne, absent her relationship with her father, is somewhat less interesting. It’s sometimes seems as if her purpose is simply to wait for Fidelis. The raising of his sons (Franz was the biological son of Fidelis‘ deceased comrade but he treats him as his own, Fidelis and Eva have three others) is engaginly portrayed even if the elder two, Franz and Markus, are portrayed in greater depth than the younger two, Emil and Erich. That is enhanced by the latter two being made twins.

The feel of life in Argus is good throughout and Erdrich displays considerable descriptive powers. The various scenes of meat preparation were incredibly sensual and almost overrode my normal distaste for cured meats.

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It is the story of Fidelis Waldvogel and friends Delphine Watzka and her partner Cyprian who try and make a life for themselves in the small prairie town of Argus, North Dakota. Fidelis and Cyprian fought in World War I and their children fight in World War II.

When Fidelis goes home from his time as a sniper with the army he seeks out Eva, his best friend's fiancée. He tells her of his death and his promise to marry her and look after the child. Due to the poverty in Europe they head off to North Dakota to a German community where he becomes the butcher.

Delphine and Cyprian are the other main characters. They make a living as a vaudeville act who after a crisis return to Argus to Delphine's alcoholic father. In cleaning out his stench filled house they discover three bodies in the cellar and try to figure out that mystery.

Eva and Delphine meet and become good friends. Their destinies are intertwined as Eva is nursed through her cancer which kills her. Delphine brings up her four boys who all go off to war eventually.
There is a lot here with the themes of love, family, friendship, small town politics and the Singing club all developed into a memorable story.

The community is a German American one which is also part of Erdrich's own as well as her Native American heritage. I went on to read most of her books and they are all very good but this one is the best.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book...It took time in the beginning as my mind was "fixated" on the book being on a butcher's singing club and the men of this club, however, it really didn't have to do with the Title...questions continued in my mind when Delphine and her partner became strong figures within the story...??? in my mind as to where's the singing club? When is Fidelis going to be the main character?...not to my disappointment many other characters came into play....Delphine, Roy, Step and a Half, Ava and her children...even the miserable and staunch Tante...Their lives became picturesque in my mind and I became quite entranced....I laughed in the early part of the book as it was a bit maudlin...however again the book shifted to people within a community and within families. My only complaint is the book ended without a full sense of Delphine's journey post her husband's death, I would have enjoyed a bit more to "close" the book out. Well Done

Louise Erdrich's The Master Butchers Singing Club set in the bleak landscape of Argus, North Dakota from the 1920's through World War II is told primarily through the perspective of Fidelis Waldvogel and Delphine Watzka. Erdrich is so adept at characterization and creating a setting that one can even imagine the taste and smells from the oven and so it is a pleasure to immerse oneself in Argus and get to know the cast of characters who populate the town. She is also skilled at setting the stage and what happens earlier in the novel and seems without importance becomes vital later.

Fidelis a German sniper by way of the war and a butcher by trade spends 12 days walking home after the war ends. Fidelis known for his strength continues his journey to tell his best friend's pregnant fiancee, Eva of his death, he falls in love with her and marries her. His life changes when he sees the wonderful bread produced in America, in Seattle and decides he will live there. He packs his butcher's knives and his father's sausages which he sells to take him across America, he only has enough to take him to Argus where he sets up shop.

Delphine is from Argus and uses the stage and her acting abilities to leave behind a drunk father and be laughed at and looked down upon from the community. Because of her strong stomach muscles she is chosen by an acrobat, Cyprian to assist in a balancing act and they travel the west together. Upon returning to Argus, Delphine meets Eva:

"Today her hair was bound back in a singular knot, the sides rolled in smooth twists, the knot itself in the shape of the figure eight, which Delphine knew was the ancient sign for eternity. Eva rose and turned away, walked across the green squares of linoleum to punch some risen dough and cover it with towels. As Delphine watched, into her head there popped a strange notion: the idea that perhaps strongly experienced moments, as when Eva turned and the sun met her hair and for that one instant the symbol blazed out, those particular moments were eternal. Those moments actually went somewhere. Into a file of moments that existed out of times range and could not be pilfered by God."

Louise Erdrich is so gifted in the way she describes simple moments that it is a pleasure to read her books. I loved that she was able to create so many layers to the simple town life of Argus, North Dakota. There are so many ideas to think of within this story that I strongly recommend it.

For her eighth novel, Erdrich stays within the confines of her fictional North Dakota town of Argus, but she focuses less on its Native American denizens than on its German immigrant population. As with her previous efforts, however, it's still a personal odyssey; as she notes in her acknowledgments, the inspiration for the novel is her grandfather (pictured on the jacket of the hardcover edition), who "fought in the trenches of the German side of World War I" before emigrating to the United States, and whose "sons served on the American side in World War II."

With the change in focus comes an appropriate change in pitch: there's far less magic realism and far more European naturalism. At times, the events and characters of "The Master Butchers Singing Club" resemble those from an offbeat soap opera, but Erdrich is far too deft a writer to let melodrama get the better of her storytelling. Beyond the occasional similarity to Lynch's Twin Peaks and the Coen brothers' Fargo, the more obvious influences are the prairie towns imagined by Sinclair Lewis and Willa Cather.

The character modeled after her grandfather, Fidelis Waldvogel, arrives from Europe with his wife and a suitcase filled with sausage, which proves to be his currency to reach the Eden he imagines to be found in the Pacific Northwest. The money earned from sales of the meat, however, gets him only as far as the godforsaken desert of North Dakota, where he eventually becomes a much-admired shopkeeper and a stalwart member of the community. On the outskirts of the town lives the novel's heroine, Delphine Watzka, who has returned to her father's home from life on the road in a vaudeville show with her alleged husband, who (it is soon revealed) lives a double life. Eventually, the paths of these two dissimilar and distinctive families cross in momentous and bizarre ways

The novel contains enough twists and mysteries to keep the pages turning: there's a triple killing uncovered upon Delphine's return, which is all the more inexplicable because the chief witness, her father, was too drunk to remember what happened; a terrifying tunnel collapse; an eccentric bag lady known as Step-and-a-Half, who has a couple of secrets all her own; and more. While each episode and revelation ranges from the farcical to the grisly, Erdrich mitigates the potential for Dickensian excess by subtly examining the effects of these events (some of which occur offstage) on her characters and on the community. And, although her work has always been infused with a comic edge, Erdrich displays a mordant (yet not unkind) wit here that differs from the tone of her earlier work.

Above all, Erdrich has written a celebratory and emotional ode to the "other" side of her family, whose fortitude and charisma she clearly admires (and it's not hard to see why). Although she reassures us that "the book is fiction except for snout salad, the bull's pizzle, and my grandmother's short stint as a human table in a vaudeville act," the reverence and the affection are as raw as the North Dakota wind.

This saga, spanning the decades between the end of WWI and 1954, is rich in characters, rich in plot, and Louise Erdrich's writing is richly eloquent. Fidelis has returned to his home in Germany after losing his best friend in battle and marries his buddy's pregnant girlfriend Eva. Fidelis emigrates to the U.S. and gets as far as Argus, North Dakota, before his sausages run out. (He's a butcher by trade and brings sausages to fund his cross-country trip.) After he sets up shop, Eva comes over, and they raise a family. Meanwhile, two other characters, Delphine and Cyprian, are touring with their circus act in which Cyprian balances atop chairs stacked on Delphine's belly. The two of them settle down in Argus, Delphine's hometown, with Delphine's father, Roy, the town drunk, and masquerade as a married couple, although Cyprian is gay. The lives of Fidelis, Eva, Delphine, and Cyprian become intertwined, and Delphine's balancing act becomes a metaphor for how she becomes responsible for the well-being of so many men--Roy, Cyprian, Fidelis and his four sons. The book has its share of tragedies, but I really like that the story is told in a not overly sentimental style. There are also a couple of mysteries, including that of the 3 bodies Delphine and Cyprian find in her father's cellar and the mystery surrounding the identity of Delphine's mother. There is also at least one laugh-out-loud revelation after a healer visits Marcus, one of Fidelis's sons, following a near-tragedy that is the most gripping section of the book.

Definitely a switch with Erdrich focusing on the German and European aspect of her heritage instead of the Native American. Maybe that's the reason it's not one of my favorites by her, although it is still an excellent read. I will say the character of Tante resonated with me. My own mother's parents were Transylvanian Saxons and she had an aunt who reminded me a LOT of Tante in the book. My mom received one of those books to write memories in as a gift. One of the questions. Who was your favorite aunt and why? My mom's reply. I didn't have a favorite aunt. I only had Tante Elizabeth. Ha ha! The woman couldn't even win without competition.

The master butcher's singing club of the title doesn't really figure into this book at all. Fidelis, the master butcher in question, does start a singing group in his new home of Argus, North Dakota, that's meant to reflect the master butcher's singing club he was a part of back in Germany, as a place where outside grievances can be set aside.

But this story is really about Delphine, a native of, though an outsider in, Argus. It's about her relationship with men, sort of, but really about what she discovers when she meets Eva, Fidelis's wife. In Eva, Delphine discovers the mother she never had, as well as a best friend. That Delphine comes to love Eva's family as her own is fortunate when Eva is struck with a massive tumor. Delphine nurses her until her death and then cares for Fidelis and their sons.

All of this makes for a story that is lovingly told. What threw me for a loop, though, was at the very end of the book when the truth about Delphine's mother is revealed to the reader, but not to Delphine herself. Although I was vaguely interested to have this mystery cleared up, I don't really think it was necessary to the story at all. By including it at the end, it seemed as though we were supposed to think that this revelation was the whole point of the story, rather than an incidental part of the character Delphine became. The answer provided excellent closure to the story as a whole, but part of me wishes Erdrich had finished the book without it.

A very strange book indeed. This was my first Louise Erdrich novel, and though the pace was slow throughout, the lush language and unique characters kept me reading and enjoying.

The relationship I enjoyed most was Cyprian and Delphine's confusingly half-platonic friendship / marriage. Delphine and her father also had some good drama, and I loved solid, capable Eva. Erdrich peoples her story with wanderers, hoarders, old maid power freaks, drunks, undertakers who treat the dead like canvases on which to apply their art, proud sausage-makers, circus performers, and a whole cast of other unusual characters.

I'm not a big fan of over-long descriptions, and the book does bog down with them sometimes, but Erdrich's language is so captivating I found myself fascinated by things I would not normally even be interested in.

The plot wanders a lot, and I'm not even sure exactly what happened at the end, but it's one of those books that stays with you.

This story struck the right chord with me. However, when I first started the book, I was not sure in what direction it would go. But the story-telling was good and I stuck with it. When I got to the part about a drunkard carrying a bottle, I was hooked. The story takes place in the time period between WWI and WWII, commencing with Fidelis immigrating to America from Germany and starting a humble life for himself in North Dakota. Next, cut to the unique relationship between Cyprian, a wandering performer, and his partner Delphine. After this introduction, the core of the story emerges -- which is a deep friendship between two women. This is a story about obligations of the heart and a will to love. Maybe not for everyone, but it reeled me in. Also, the title reflects only a very small part of the story and seems more like a tribute to the life of a man who inspired the story.

That Louise Erdrich likes to tell stories becomes obvious from the reading of her novel The Master Butchers Singing Club. She never races through a tale, but takes her time, dissecting every nuance in delicious detail. The book's central character is Delphine, whom we meet as she is returning home to Argus, North Dakota in the early 1930s with her balancing act partner Cyprian to care for her father, the town drunk. Delphine is a survivalist - a hard working, tough love, feet-firmly-planted-on-the-ground woman. She befriends Eva, the wife of the local butcher, Fidelis Waldvogel, who had immigrated to Argus from Germany after the first world war. Fidelis starts a singing club, the members of which make up many of the contributing characters of the story.

I had expected that the book would be about Fidelis, as the title had suggested "The Master Butcher". And it is, in that all of the stories and subplots relate to Fidelis and his family. But the novel really centers around Delphine and her struggles to survive and to help the people she loves. The novel is rich with subplots involving the various residents of Argus - Clarisse, the town mortician, Hawk, the love-struck sheriff, Step-and-a-half, the town rag collector, Tanta, Fidelis's spiteful spinster sister, and others. At times the novel reminded me of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg Ohio, with its bizarre midwestern characters all not-so-loosely connected.

I've read some other reviews of The Master Butchers Singing Club that didn't like the wandering subplots. I for one found the novel deeply satisfying. Erdrich writes simply and well. She paints vivid scenes that become etched in one's mind. I can see Tanta in her shiny silver suit, striding forcefully through the town looking for a job. I can see Delphine's father's house so layered with garbage, vomit, and piss that it takes months to clean out. I see Step-and-a-half's notions shop with the brand new sewing machine in the corner. Sometimes Erdrich lingers too long with the inner thoughts of some of the characters. My reaction when that happens is, this is a woman writing. Men don't write this way. I don't think my father would have the patience for this book. But my mother would love it.

In the end, The Master Butchers Singing Club is about love, loyalty, tragedy, and redemption. It is about how small actions of good will can change the course of lives. I highly recommend it.

Like some other reviewers, I was "mislead" by the title of this book. I also thought that the story centered on a butcher and the singing club he was a member of. I was surprised when I read this book and found out differently. Quite pleasantly surprised.

Although I have seen Erdrich's books before, this was the first one I ever read. I found her writing to be quite brilliant. My interest in the story and characters never wavered thanks to Erdrich's ability to write such beautiful scenarios and imagery. All of her characters, particularly Delphine were written incredibly well. I personally wished there would have been more about Eva. She left the story far too early for me. Erdrich does a great job of describing the life these characters led and gives a wonderful feeling for the type of town Argus was.

Sure, there a few loose ends, some untidy things that Erdrich could have cleaned up, but this in no way detracted from the story for me. I highly recommend this wonderful book and will certainly begin reading her other books.

Several years ago I read "Tales of Burning Love" by Erdrich and didn't like it at all. I picked this book up because of the cover and almost didn't read it because of past experience with the author. I'm so glad I let that face on the cover draw me in. The characters in "Master Butcher" are real people who are products of the land, environment, and times in which they live. Their lives are hard, but yet are sometimes filled with humor and song. Their thoughts and feelings are repressed but not depressed. The book is not "pretty" yet it is not "ugly." In our neat, clean, government inspected lives, we are so far removed from the act of butchering that it seems dark and violent, but to Fidelis and those around him, it is merely a fact of life -- an occupation and a good one at that. Fidelis is a butcher who sings.
Erdrich does a great job of weaving humor, fear, anxiety, and love into characters and events that are never contrived but are straightforward and almost passionless. I'm definitely going to explore more of Erdrich's works.

Erdrich is a great storyteller, and is a master of language. This novel is one of her best since the her first three novels.

However, I felt the end was rushed and disorganized, and so at the last, the story just hit the ground. I understand how this can happen to a writer, but it was disappointing that there was no explaination or reunion of Erich with his American family; only passing reference to Franz's death(?); suprising family relations; and no word after the War about Markus.

The last two chapters felt forced and there were many more unresolved characters than usual. Perhaps the anishanabeg connection to wounded knee needs its own novel? It really felt dropped in and disconnected, not usually a complaint I have with Erdrich's writings.

Lovely use of language though, which is the author's strongest talent.