Somehow I forgot to add this one. Really enjoyed it, though the ending was a bit non-final. Just heard Toews on CBC radio and it sounds like this story was based on her life with her sister. (Her sister has since committed suicide, which influenced Toews' most recent book, All My Puny Sorrows.) T...
I've been trying to think of a way to describe this book. I think the only thing I can really say is "profound".Basically, the book is a recounting of Mel Toews' life, written by his daughter, but from his point of view. It is a graceful story of growing up, dating, getting married, becoming a sc...
it was hard to let this book end. as the remaining pages dwindled and dwindled, i found more and more things to do instead of reading. maybe i should brush my teeth. maybe i should check my email. maybe i should sleep even though i have ONE PAGE TO GO.part of it is that miriam toews is a genius a...
Miriam Toews saunters along the line between comedy and grief as if she might lose her balance at any moment. But she never does. The precarious tone of her novels about fractured families is the crafted effect of a nimble writer. Raised by Mennonites in a small Canadian town, Toews has developed...
Wilson invited me in for coffee and I said no, I couldn’t. Then I changed my mind and said yeah, okay. He told me he wanted to show me something. Marijke had gone to her room and closed the door—we could hear her laughing or crying—and Diego was busy talking on the radio. Wilson asked me if I wou...
I saw an orderly who had once been the lead singer of a local punk band. He was stacking trays and whistling next to a poster that listed the symptoms of Flesh Eating Disease. I went outside into the sunshine and walked all the way back, along the river, to my mother’s apartment. Well, I tried to...
He looked after Summer Feelin’ from quarter to ten in the morning ‘til quarter after two in the afternoon. Those were the hours that Knute worked for Hosea. Although calling it work was a bit of an exaggeration. Mostly it just gave her a break from Tom and Dory and Summer Feelin’. Tom was having ...
They have lost my underwear in the wash. Why wasn’t it labelled? one nurse asks the other. I’ll tell the daughters when they come in today, she says. (God forbid!) He should wear a johnnie (!) because the other patients don’t know why he’s here. He looks like a doctor when he roams around the hal...