Miriam Toews writes with unflinching honesty and dark humor about complex family dynamics, trauma, and the search for joy amidst hardship. Her works often explore the tension between communal traditions and individual freedom, particularly through the lens of her Mennonite heritage. Toews masterfully balances characters' vulnerabilities with their resilient strength, offering readers deeply moving yet provocative narratives. Her distinctive voice captures both the pain and the profound beauty of the human experience.
One morning Mel Toews put on his coat and hat and walked out of town, prepared to die. But it is also a funny, winsome evocation of country life: growing up on farm, courting a wife, becoming a teacher, and rearing a happy, strong family in the midst of private torment.
The stifling, reclusive life of nineteen-year-old Irma Voth, recently married, and more recently deserted is turned on its head when a film crew moves in to make a movie about the strict religious community, in which she lives.
Elfrieda, a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants to die. Yolandi, divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men as she tries to find true love: she desperately wants to keep her older sister alive. But Elf's latest suicide attempt is a shock: she is three weeks away from the opening of her highly anticipated international tour. Can she be nursed back to "health" in time? Does it matter? As the situation becomes ever more complicated, Yoli faces the most terrifying decision of her life.
'Sets standards for grandmotherly swearing and outspokenness I can never hope to match. Go Grandma Elvira!' Margaret Atwood
Knute is a twenty-four-year old single mother who returns home to Algren with her daughter, Summer Feelin' to look after her father Tom, who has suffered a heart attack. Hosea Funk, a friend of Tom's and the mayor of Algren has a lot on his mind. The prime minister has promised to pay a visit to whichever town in Canada has the smallest population. Algren has held this position for some time but recent baby booms and returning families, like Knute, threaten to tip Algren over the magic 1500. As Knute is reunited with Max, SF's father and Hosea finds himself compromised by his own additions to the population count, we find ourselves drawn into the warm, intimate heart of this funny, feel-good novel.
Meet the Troutmans. Hattie is living in Paris, city of romance, but has just been dumped by her boyfriend. Min, her sister back in Canada, is going through a particularly dark period. And Min’s two kids, Logan and Thebes, are not talking and talking way too much, respectively. When Hattie receives a phone call from eleven-year-old Thebes, begging her to return to Canada, she arrives home to find Min on her way to a psychiatric ward, and becomes responsible for her niece and nephew. Realising that she is way out of her league, Hattie hatches a plan to find the kids’ long-lost father. With only the most tenuous lead to go on, she piles Logan and Thebes into the family van, and they head south . . .
Finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour Now available from Vintage Canada, a hilarious first novel about life’s ups and downs from the author of the bestselling A Complicated Kindness. Lucy and Lish are two single moms who live in Winnipeg’s Have-a-Life housing project – also known as Half-a-Life – where the nosy neighbours won’t mind their own business, kids’ wagons and cheap strollers are the only way to get to the grocery store and the summer rain is endless. Lucy’s not quite sure who the father of her son is, but Lish still pines for the father of her twins, a fire-eating busker who came through town a few years back. So when Lish decides they should head to Colorado to find him, they borrow a van held together with coat-hangers and electrical tape, load it up with clothes, toys, food and kids, and hit the road. Lucy’s not sure they’ll ever find the fire-eater, but there’s no way she can know that this will be the summer of her amazing luck.
A profound, unsettling novel from the award-winning author of All My Puny Sorrows, soon to be a major film starring Frances McDormand, Rooney Mara and Ben Whishaw.
Sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel dreams of escaping her Mennonite town, East Village, Manitoba, to join the vibrant world of Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull in New York City. Instead, she faces a life confined by strict rules imposed by her uncle Hans, known as The Mouth of Darkness. With no train, bar, or exciting job opportunities, the town offers only menial work at the local abattoir or pioneer village. Nomi grapples with the loss of her sister Tash and mother Trudie, who left three years prior. Living with her well-meaning but neglectful father, Ray, a church elder, they cope with their grief in contrasting ways—Ray seeks order through late-night reorganizations of the city dump, while Nomi embraces chaos through rebellion, drugs, and music. Nomi's narrative shifts between her troubled present and memories of happier times, revealing her struggles against the oppressive traditions of her community. As she skips school, hangs out on Suicide Hill, and explores her sexuality, she reflects on family, faith, and love. Her journey leads her to confront her grief and the hypocrisy around her, culminating in a poignant climax. Despite the weight of her losses, Nomi clings to hope and the possibility of a future beyond her constraints. This novel has garnered critical acclaim, highlighting Nomi as a deeply relatable character within a stark, silent world.
"A tribute to the power of both pain and love through three generations in an unusual family."--From English edition.
Eine urkomische und bewegende Geschichte über Hattie, die nach dem Klinikaufenthalt ihrer Schwester mit ihren Neffen und ihrer Nichte einen Roadtrip quer durch die USA unternimmt. Auf der Suche nach dem Vater erleben sie skurrile Abenteuer, wachsen als Familie zusammen und lernen, was im Leben wirklich zählt.
Na cestě za poznáním sebe sama. Veselá a zároveň srdcervoucí kniha vypráví příběh rozbité rodiny Troutmanů z kanadské Manitoby. Psychicky narušená Mína prožívá obzvláště temné období a míří do psychiatrické léčebny. Její patnáctiletý syn Logan a jedenáctiletá dcera Tereza už nevědí, jak dál, tak Tereza na pokraji zoufalství zavolá tetě Hattie, Mínině sestře, které se právě v Paříži bortí její partnerský vztah. Troutmanovi, taková normálně dysfunkční rodinka z Kanady. Hattie bez váhání sedne na letadlo, aby se o málomluvného Logana a mnohomluvnou Terezu postarala, velmi rychle si však uvědomí, že něco takového může být nad její síly. Proto vymyslí divoký plán – najít dlouho ztraceného otce obou dětí.
