A book review - A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

[meowsings]

Hi everyone

Another LJ refugee here - and here's a review of A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews which is the best thing I've read in a while.

The narrator of this novel is sixteen-year-old Nomi (nee Naomi) Nickel, who lives with her father Ray in a Mennonite community in rural Canada. Her older sister Tashie left with a boyfriend and their mother is simply gone – Nomi does not know where and neither does the reader. This double absence is at the heart of the novel.

Miriam Toews manages to combine laugh-out-loud comedy with serious themes. So for example when Nomi is working at the heritage museum she sets her pioneer bonnet on fire by sneaking an illicit cigarette. A photograph of this (taken just before an American tourist dunked her in a water barrel) hangs in the café, captioned "Young Pioneer, Naomi Nickel, learns valuable lesson." Nomi's wry, ironic tone is pitch-perfect throughout and is one of the strengths of the novel. Since Toews doesn't use quotation marks and has an episodic rather than a chronological structure, she creates a stream-of-consciousness effect that underlines Nomi's growing sense of alienation.

The wry humour makes Nomi's rebellion against the values of her community and her gradual descent into depression more shocking, not less. The reader understands, as Nomi does not, that she is failed by everyone who should have helped her. And because Nomi is not a reliable narrator, it is only at the end of the book that the extent of this betrayal is revealed, as part of the darker side of a religious community that "shuns" the excommunicated and allows no right of appeal.

Yet this is not a bitter novel. Toews grew up in a Mennonite community and left aged 18 and A Complicated Kindness clearly owes much to her own experiences. She has said that she chose to write this book as fiction because she would have been harsher in a factual account of Mennonite life. This generosity is echoed in Nomi's struggle to understand and excuse what she sees around her, and in her loyalty to her friends and family.

This original and moving examination of how fundamentalist religion affects individual conscience, the family unit and the wider community won the Canadian Governor-General's award. It's a rare achievement to combine comedy with such demanding themes, and A Complicated Kindness does so with panache.

Comments

[sweet_sparrow]

You know the one thing I dislike about reviews? They make me want to read more books. Of course I love that about them too, but still... *adds to list of books to remember*

Also, *waves* Hi! ^-^ Welcome to DW. ^-^

[venetia_sassy]

Hmm, this might go on my wishlist (currently several hundred books long but who's counting? *g*) The styling sounds like something I'll love or hate though.