A Complicated Kindness - Miriam Toews - Part 1

A Complicated Kindness
Miriam Toews

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 32

 February 1, 2017 

Book 8 - A Complicated Kindness
by Miriam Toews (2007)
 Part 1 - Pages 1-256

Reading Time - 5 Hours

A friend of mine recommended this book a few weeks ago. I'm finding that my 2017 Book Challenge List is expanding by the day! Some of these "extra" books are read on the side while I'm reading an "official" book off my list. Rather than mixing up my blog posts between different books, I'm just doing a single post on these extras.

This book comes with an impressive pedigree: Canadian Bestseller, Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award. Set in a small Manitoba down, the novel takes us into the world of a fundamentalist Mennonite sect and the experience of one teenager, Nomi, who struggles against the world into which she is born.

The prose in this book is... well... it's not grammatical. The book is written sort of along the lines of a stream-of-consciousness thinking of our teenage heroine, Nomi. She writes about life from a very raw and real place. She writes about the shallow aspects of her life, and the deep. But we, as the readers, aren't always sure what is shallow and what is deep.

I can't say I "enjoyed" reading the book. Such raw writing isn't really enjoyable. On the other hand... the book stayed with me long after I finished reading it. It made me think about the role of religion in the world and how we can be caught in a web of belief and deceit... pretending that everything is OK, while we are quietly dying inside. At the end of the day, the book made me consider and question some of my beliefs... and that, in my opinion, is a great book!

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