What do You think about A Complicated Kindness (2005)?
Let's first just get out of the way how geeked out I was to see a reference to Reach for the Top, having myself been geeky enough in high school to have been at the provincial finals one year. I really, really liked this book. It seemed to have the perfect balance between things I could relate to and things that the author was teaching me about a group of people that I have never known much about (in particular, I thought the Mennonites were much more like the Amish and I assumed that at the very least there'd be no TV.) The narrator's voice felt authentic, as did the situation of her friend Lids, who saddened me a great deal."That I belong within the frightful fresco of this man’s dream unnerves me.""The mark of the beast? Streets paved in gold? Seven white horses? What? Fuck off. I dream of escaping into the real world.""I wanted to experience goodness and humanity outside of any religious framework."Okay, so it was a bit odd to find a lot of my very atheist teenage thoughts mirrored here in the voice of a teenage Mennonite, who spent a lot of the book worried her sister was going to go to hell. Granted, I related a lot to Nomi and the restlessness that comes from growing up in a small town, feeling cut off from the big city. "It was the same feeling you get when you’ve spent a lot of time with a friend or relatives or someone and you’re kind of sick of them and want to be alone again but then the time comes for them to leave and suddenly more than anything you don’t want them to go and you act really nice again and run around doing things for them but you know that time is running out and then when they’re gone you’re kind of relieved but also sad that you hadn’t been a better friend and you tell yourself next time for sure I’ll be a better friend. And you kind of want to call them up and apologize for being a jerk but at the same time you don’t want to start something stupid and you hope the feeling will just go away and that nobody hates you."So perfectly what it is like to be at home visiting the family for more then ten days at a time."I also liked it because every time I looked at it I was reminded that I was, at that very moment, not bleeding from my face. And those are powerful words of hope, really."One of my best friends always tells me that you don't need to worry until you're bleeding from the eyes. And I have also always found that cheering and hopeful.
—Chinook
As I read Miriam Toews' A Complicated Kindness, I couldn't stop thinking about Richard Dawkins' assertion that religion is child abuse.Looking around at our neighbours and friends, ourselves and our parents, it is easy to laugh off this idea. We may see our churches doing good works in the community; they may be providing relief for Haiti or some other disaster struck land; they may be providing shelter for the homeless or the physically abused; their beliefs and morality may be providing guidance to people around us; so yes, there are a number of good things that churches can do, which makes it easy to scoff at the idea that religion is inherently abusive. Perhaps it is too easy to scoff, though.A Complicated Kindness is all about how a church and its beliefs abuse a congregation -- but specifically how the ideas of Menno Simons and his modern Mennonite followers destroy the Nickel family.Nomi, her sister Tash, her mother Trudie, and her father Ray lose everything because of their religion. They lose each other, they lose themselves, they lose their sanity, and they are forced to make their way in the world -- or not -- despite the irreparable damage done to them by the belief system they were born into. None of them chose to be Mennonites. They were born Mennonite, raised Mennonite, and destroyed Mennonite. Their religion was abusive in the worst possible ways, and as I loved Nomi more and more, as I came closer to her pain through her fragmented stream-of-consciousness, as my anger rose, I started to accept Dawkins' point in a way I'd never allowed myself before.But Dawkins is not the only one calling religion abusive; he is not alone in his opposition. Nicholas Humphrey, author of The Mind Made Flesh, "argues that, in the same way as Amnesty [International:] works tirelessly to free political prisoners the world over, we should work to free the children of the world from the religions which, with parental approval, damage minds too young to understand what is happening to them."Miriam Toews' beautifully sad story brought me one step closer to agreeing with the assertions of these men; I only wish I had enjoyed the story more than I did. Although I am sure I wasn't supposed to leave it with a smile, I would like to have left it with something other than a deep depression.
—Brad
I appreciated this book much more on re-read (it's hard to pick a fave of hers - but at least I now have all three that I've read so far clearly in my mind). I am still slightly more impressed with the two that followed, The Flying Troutmans and Irma Voth, but it's only because ... because ... why? It's now the merest gradation of five star-dom that separate them.There is no doubt that Nomi's 'voice' is a spectacular accomplishment. Distill it, and each drop is pure essence du Toews. I think that what I struggle with here is the lack of story. The ennui (which is the point, of course) is wearing. I love teen angst and pain as much as anyone, and told this well, this wrenchingly, it's hard to critique. So even typing that, that the lack of story is what differentiates this one from the others, is, I feel, not true.But it was almost too much, y'know? Paragraph after paragraph of the most stunning, sardonic, almost zeugmatic insights out of this gr 12 Mennonite girl, struggling with a fundamentalist faith that has been imposed on her and an abandonment of monumental proportions. Collapsing under the burden of responsibility and grief, acting out, no relief in sight. Gahhhh. This writing hurts, physically - it is so beautiful, so painful, so funny. It hits you like a wall, with the most mundane and profound thoughts given equal treatment. This is the brilliance of the writing: that it so perfectly mirrors Nomi's psychological state. Everything is equally important, so nothing is. Complete overload of random, irrelevant and vital detail - so nothing makes sense, nothing has meaning. Standing in the midst of the largest questions about family bonds, love, faith - and all while 'coming of age' to boot. But here's what I will say about Toews' characters (god, I hope they are not too too autobiographical, but I fear they are): there is a life force in them. A will toward not just survival, but a cathartic, definitive, life-affirming strength that forshadows the emergence from pain as a better, whole and happy person. Yes. This is what I believe. For each and every one of them.Just brilliant.
—Jennifer (aka EM)
