Shadow Tag

Shadow Tag is a literary novel by Karen Louise Erdrich. First published in 2010, the book chronicles a failed marriage and what it means to be a broken family. Critics note that Shadow Tag is very different from any other work published by Erdrich, although it has been just as well received by readers. Erdrich is an American author who writes poetry, novels, and children’s literature. Quarter-Ojibwe, Erdrich is one of the most acclaimed Native writers of recent years, and she’s been nominated for prestigious awards including the Pulitzer Prize. Shadow Tag is one of her many contemporary novels.

The novel’s protagonists are a married couple, Irene and Gil. Irene is a failed historian who questions where her life is going. She feels like she’s messed up her chances of ever securing a PhD candidacy. Gil is a highly successful artist who makes his money through painting intimate and emotionally revealing portraits of Irene. He’s also an aggressive alcoholic who’s always looking for someone to take his temper out on.

Irene and Gil have an unhealthy, toxic marriage. They are co-dependent and place unreasonable expectations upon one another, and they’re always fighting about something. Irene reveals that Gil’s raped her on occasion because he believes he owns her body completely.



Irene and Gil’s three children are talented perfectionists. One is an art prodigy, another is a genius at mathematics, and the other is well-rounded. To outsiders, they are the family that has everything. No one knows that they are a deeply dysfunctional unit that is hanging together by a thread. Shadow Tag opens a few months before Irene and Gil’s marriage breaks down irretrievably, and it follows the family’s downfall.

One day, Irene makes a disturbing discovery—Gil’s been reading her diary. Irene’s angry because she feels like Gil already owns her body, and now, he owns her private thoughts. He’s made so much money from painting naked portraits of her, but he isn’t satisfied with this. He can’t be happy unless he knows everything about her. The pair agree to visit a therapist, but it doesn’t work out.

Irene decides to get her revenge by keeping a new diary. She plans on writing down everything she hates about Gil, her life, and her family, to punish Gil for reading her innermost thoughts. Irene reveals that she feels as though Gil’s taken over her identity. He’s stolen her personality and she’s the sum of his artwork. Gil has, Irene believes, painted her spirit into his canvases, and she’ll never get it back.



Irene explains that there’s only one place she feels safe from Gil’s intrusion, and that’s the bathtub. However, as their marriage deteriorates, even the bathroom isn’t a sanctuary anymore. Gil insists on waiting outside the bathroom for her and asking how long she’ll be. There’s nowhere safe for Irene to relax. The more Irene writes about Gil in her second diary, the more he follows her everywhere.

The reasons for Gil’s obsession with his wife are slowly revealed. Gil is Native American, and he doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as just another Native artist. Other artists advise him to steer clear of painting Native American subjects, because he’ll always be known as a Native artist who can’t paint anything else. In response to this fear, Gil obsessively paints Irene who is a white American.

Gil makes it clear that he can’t live without owning Irene entirely. He lives to paint her, possess her, and control her. Irene, meanwhile, turns to alcohol and increasingly erratic behaviour to claim her independence. As tensions grow between the couple, they fail to see the damage they’re inflicting on their three young children. They don’t appreciate that children are very intuitive and pick up on the negative energy at home.



The children cope with the marriage breakdown in their own distinct ways. Stoney, who’s only six and the youngest sibling, carries a stuffed lion everywhere and clings to his older brother. Whenever Stoney hears his parents fighting, he grabs another stuffed animal, until he’s wandering around the house with his arms full most nights. Florian, the eldest sibling, drinks from Irene’s secret wine stash, and she’s too obsessed with her own feelings to notice.

Riel, the middle child, obsessively hoards snacks and water in case she’s forced to run away. She doesn’t feel safe and she’s convinced that there will be a terrorist attack. Florian doesn’t know how to console his younger siblings because he’s only a child himself. The three siblings spend most of their time together with the family dogs for company.

Before the marriage breakdown, everyone assumed that Florian would become a famous mathematician. Now, he’s dependent on alcohol and even takes drugs to block out his painful homelife. His future is uncertain. Gil takes his temper out on Florian and hits him on several occasions. Florian resents Irene and hates her for letting this happen.



The marriage, unsurprisingly, collapses. As the narrative in Shadow Tag moves between diary entries and omniscient narration, readers are left feeling as though they’ve intruded on a private family moment and stolen whatever confidentiality Irene had left. The unhappy ending is inevitable.