New Releases by Miriam Toews

"Revelatory." --New York Times Book Review "Essential reading. A companion for turbulent times." --Laura van den Berg "Nothing short of a masterpiece.” --The San Francisco Chronicle Named a Must-Read Book of the Summer by The Los Angeles Times, People Magazine, and Town & Country Internationally bestselling author Miriam Toews' memoir of the will to write--a work of disobedient memory, humor, and exquisite craft set against a content-hungry, prose-stuffed society.

Internationally bestselling author Miriam Toews recounts her father's life as he might have told it, right up to his final day.

«Ets una coseta petita i has d'aprendre a lluitar.» La Swiv s'ha pres el consell de l'àvia massa literalment i ara està expulsada de l'escola. La mare està embarassada i no ha deixat de treballar, així que l'àvia serà l'encarregada de la formació de la Swiv i ho farà amb una educació molt particular. La Swiv aprèn matemàtiques amb un trencaclosques amish o com es cava una tomba a l'hivern, i amb l'àvia emprenen un nou projecte vital, amb què es proposen explicar les seves vides escrivint cartes que mai enviaran. Els mètodes de l'àvia potser són poc ortodoxos, però s'ha enfrontat al pitjor de la vida amb un esperit rebel i independent, i això és el que espera transmetre a la seva neta. El seu temps s'està acabant. La salut li falla i el nou nadó està a punt d'arribar: podrà inspirar, l'àvia, aquesta flama en la Swiv i assegurar-se que no s'apagui mai? Commovedora, hilarant i profundament viva, Que no s'apagui la flama és una carta d'amor a les mares i les àvies, i a totes les dones que encara lluiten —dolorosament i feroç— per una manera de viure independent, amb les seves pròpies normes.

"Move over, Scout Finch! There's a new contender for feistiest girl in fiction, and her name is Swiv." -USA Today, "Best Books of the Year" "Toews is a master of dialogue." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice "A revelation." -Richard Russo NPR Best Books of the Year * Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize * Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalist * Indie Next Pick * Amazon Editors' Pick * Apple Book of the Month From the bestselling author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows, a compassionate, darkly humorous, and deeply wise novel about three generations of women. “You're a small thing,” Grandma writes, “and you must learn to fight.” Swiv's Grandma, Elvira, has been fighting all her life. From her upbringing in a strict religious community, she has fought those who wanted to take away her joy, her independence, and her spirit. She has fought to make peace with her loved ones when they have chosen to leave her. And now, even as her health fails, Grandma is fighting for her family: for her daughter, partnerless and in the third term of a pregnancy; and for her granddaughter Swiv, a spirited nine-year-old who has been suspended from school. Cramped together in their Toronto home, on the precipice of extraordinary change, Grandma and Swiv undertake a vital new project, setting out to explain their lives in letters they will never send. Alternating between the exuberant, precocious voice of young Swiv and her irrepressible, tenacious Grandma, Fight Night is a love letter to mothers and grandmothers, and to all the women who are still fighting-painfully, ferociously- for a way to live on their own terms.

Una nit, vuit dones mennonites de diferents edats es troben en un paller per dur a terme una reunió secreta. Durant els darrers dos anys, aquestes dones, i més d'un centenar d'altres noies de la seva colònia, han estat violades repetidament de nit per dimonis que venen a castigar els seus pecats. Ara que les dones han descobert que havien estat drogades i atacades per un grup d'homes de la seva pròpia comunitat, estan decidides a protegir-se a si mateixes i a salvaguardar les seves filles de possibles mals futurs. Mentre els homes de la colònia van a la ciutat per pagar la fiança i alliberar els violadors, aquestes dones, totes analfabetes, sense cap coneixement del món fora de la seva comunitat, tindran molt poc temps per prendre una decisió: haurien de quedar-se a la comunitat, l'únic món que han conegut, o haurien d'atrevir-se a marxar-ne?

From the bestselling author of Women Talking, a "wrenchingly honest, darkly funny novel" (Entertainment Weekly). Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfrieda's life is enviable (she's a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, and happily married) and Yolandi's a mess (she's divorced and broke, with two teenagers growing up too quickly), they are fiercely close-raised in a Mennonite household and sharing the hardship of Elf's desire to end her life. After Elf's latest attempt, Yoli must quickly determine how to keep her family from falling apart while facing a profound question: what do you do for a loved one who truly wants to die? All My Puny Sorrows is a deeply personal story that is as much comedy as it is tragedy, a goodbye grin from the friend who taught you how to live.

A single mom returns to her hometown in Manitoba and gets tangled up in the mayor’s scheme to meet the Canadian Prime Minister . . . A big-hearted, hilarious novel of small-town Canada and its larger-than-life characters—including one stubborn, stray dog—from the author of Women Talking Life in Winnipeg didn’t go as planned for Knute McCloud and her daughter. She’s moved back to Algren to help her mom look after her dad after his heart attack, and gets a job working for the longtime mayor and her dad’s best friend, Hosea Funk. Knute finds herself mixed up with Hosea’s attempts to achieve his dream of meeting the Prime Minister, who Hosea believes is his long-lost father after a secret deathbed confession from his mother. In order to be designated Canada’s smallest town and get an official visit from that very same Prime Minister, they have to keep the town’s population to 1,500—no more, no less. Problem is, people keep coming and going, having triplets, or getting married, or dying. Hosea’s longtime girlfriend wants to move in, and then Knute’s ex shows up—it’s causing no end of trouble. A delightfully quirky novel about the eccentricities of small-town life, and finally finding out where you truly belong.

"This saga of bad luck and good company is a wry, scary, heartfelt ode to the traverses we have to make in life when we're at the end of our rope and there's no net below us." —ELLE From the author of Women Talking—now an Academy Award-winning film starring Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, Frances McDormand, and Jessie Buckley When Hattie's moody boyfriend dumps her in Paris, she returns home to find that her sister Min is in the psych ward again. Freaked out by the prospect of becoming a surrogate mother to Min's kids, Logan and Thebes, Hattie decides to take them in the family van to find their father, last heard to be running an idiosyncratic art gallery in South Dakota. What ensues is a remarkable journey across America, as aunt and kids—through chaos as diverse as their personalities—discover one another to be both far crazier and far more normal than any of them thought.

Entre 2005 et 2009, dans une communauté mennonite isolée de la Bolivie, appelée la colonie du Manitoba, du nom de la province du Canada, de nombreuses filles et femmes, le matin venu, éprouvaient de la difficulté à émerger du sommeil. On les avait agressées durant la nuit, et leur corps meurtri saignait. Il s'est avéré que huit hommes de la colonie s'étaient servis d'un anesthésiant vétérinaire pour plonger leurs victimes dans l'inconscience et les violer. Ce qu'elles disent est à la fois une réaction à ces faits vécus, exprimée par le truchement de la fiction, et un acte d'imagination féminine.

Elfrieda et Yolanda, deux soeurs, ont grandi dans une communauté mennonite de la ville de Winnipeg, au Canada. La première s''est révélée, très jeune, particulièrement douée pour le piano ; elle deviendra plus tard une concertiste reconnue. Seulement, à quarante ans, Elfrieda développe une maladie mentale qui la rend dépressive et suicidaire. La musique, source de réconfort depuis toujours, ne suffit plus à l''apaiser et Yolanda doit la supplier de « rester en vie ». Largement inspiré de la vie de l''auteur, Pauvres petits chagrins dresse, avec poésie, le portrait d''une maladie effrayante car encore souvent mal définie. Le livre aborde, à l''heure où le débat sur le suicide assisté s''intensifie, le point de vue du malade et des membres de sa famille avec justesse et empathie. Ce livre interroge, sans prétendre donner une réponse unique : jusqu''où peut aller la souffrance psychologique ? Lorsque aucune douleur physique n''afflige le patient, est-il légitime de recourir au suicide assisté ? Si le suicide occupe une place importante dans le roman de Miriam Toews, il n''en est pas le sujet principal. À travers ce récit, l''auteur explore la relation particulière qui lie deux soeurs. Pourquoi Yolanda cherche à maintenir sa soeur en vie contre sa volonté ? Les dialogues entre les soeurs tentent d''apporter une réponse et sont pour la plupart imprégnés de beaucoup d''humour, une prouesse de la part de Miriam Toews, considérant l''aspect tragique du sujet abordé.

From the award-winning author of A Complicated Kindness comes a heart-wrenching yet wryly funny story about setting out on the road to self-discovery, and finding the strength to survive in the face of immeasurable loss. Nineteen-year-old Irma Voth lives in a Mennonite community in northern Mexico, surrounded by desert and both physically and culturally isolated from the surrounding towns and cities. It’s been six years since her family up and left Canada to escape the prying eyes of the government and preserve their religious freedom, but Irma still misses the minor freedoms she had in their small town. She even misses the cold. This new life has not been an easy one, and Irma finds herself deserted by her husband of one year, who has left to pursue a life of drug-running, instead of working her family’s farm. The most devastating blow for Irma is that he didn’t take her with him, take her away, so now she’s left to live under her father’s domineering rule alone. Things change for Irma when a film crew moves into the empty house next door. They’ve come to make a movie about the Mennonite community, and have made a deal with Irma’s father to stay on their land. The director enlists Irma to work for them as a translator, as she can speak not only Spanish and English but Plattdeutsch, or Low German, the language of her people. At first bemused by the ragged and absurd crewmembers, Irma comes to embrace the passion and creative freedom of their world – but in doing so brings on the wrath of her father, who is determined to keep her from it at all costs. When Irma’s thirteen-year-old sister Aggie begins to come by and spend time with the crew, their father is sent over the edge with rage, and Irma is forced to make a hard decision to save not only herself, but her younger sister, and to break the dark chain of violence holding her family. The girls flee to the capital, Mexico City, not knowing where they’ll find food or shelter, let alone build a life, but knowing for the first time that they are free to make that choice. And even as they begin to understand the truth of the tragedy that has their family in its grip, Irma and Aggie use their love as a source of strength to help each other move on from their past lives and work toward a future that can truly become anything they want it to be.

A Novel by the Governor General’s Literary Award—winning author of A Complicated Kindness Lucy Van Alstyne always thought she’d grow up to become a forest ranger. Instead, at the age of eighteen, she’s found herself with quite a different job title: Single Mother on the Dole. As for the father of her nine-month-old son, Dillinger, well…it could be any of number of guys. At the Have-a-Life housing project–aptly nicknamed Half-a-Life by those who call it home–Lucy meets Lish, a zany and exuberant woman whose idea of fashion is a black beret with a big silver spider brooch stuck on it. Lish is the mother of four daughters, two by a man on welfare himself and twins from a one-week stand with a fire-eating busker who stole her heart–and her wallet. Living on the dole isn’t a walk in the park for Lucy and Lish. Dinner almost always consists of noodles. Transportation means pushing a crappy stroller through the rain. Then there are the condescending welfare agents with their dreaded surprise inspections. And just across the street is Serenity Place, another housing project with which Half-a-Life is engaged in a full-on feud. When the women aren’t busy snitching on each other, they’re spreading rumours–or plotting elaborate acts of revenge. In the middle of a mosquito-infested rainy season, Lish and Lucy decide to escape the craziness of Half-A-Life by taking to the road. In a van held together with coat-hangers and electrical tape and crammed to the hilt with kids and toys, they set off to Colorado in search Lish’s lost love and the father of her twins. Whether they’ll find him is questionable, but the down-and-out adventure helps Lucy realize that this just may be the summer of her amazing luck. Miriam Toews’s debut novel, Summer of My Amazing Luck opens our eyes to a social class rarely captured in fiction. At once hilarious and heartbreaking, it is inhabited by an unforgettable and poignant group of characters. Shortlisted for both the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, it also earned Miriam the John Hirsch Award for the Most Promising Manitoba Writer.

Découvrant à son retour de Paris que sa soeur doit de nouveau être hospitalisée en psychiatrie, une jeune femme part avec sa nièce, Thebes, douze ans, et son neveu, Logan, quinze ans, aux États-Unis à la recherche de leur père. Un voyage rempli d''incidents loufoques où les trois héros, aux caractères passablement déjantés, apprendront à cohabiter malgré leurs différences. [SDM].

Sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel longs to hang out with Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull in New York City’s East Village. Instead she’s trapped in East Village, Manitoba, a small town whose population is Mennonite: “the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager.” East Village is a town with no train and no bar whose job prospects consist of slaughtering chickens at the Happy Family Farms abattoir or churning butter for tourists at the pioneer village. Ministered with an iron fist by Nomi’s uncle Hans, a.k.a. The Mouth of Darkness, East Village is a town that’s tall on rules and short on fun: no dancing, drinking, rock ’n’ roll, recreational sex, swimming, make-up, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities or staying up past nine o’clock. As the novel begins, Nomi struggles to cope with the back-to-back departures three years earlier of Tash, her beautiful and mouthy sister, and Trudie, her warm and spirited mother. She lives with her father, Ray, a sweet yet hapless schoolteacher whose love is unconditional but whose parenting skills amount to benign neglect. Father and daughter deal with their losses in very different ways. Ray, a committed elder of the church, seeks to create an artificial sense of order by reorganizing the city dump late at night. Nomi favours chaos as she tries to blunt her pain through “drugs and imagination.” Together they live in a limbo of unanswered questions. Nomi’s first person narrative shifts effortlessly between the present and the past. Throughout, in a voice both defiant and vulnerable, she offers hilarious and heartbreaking reflections on life, death, family, faith and love. Winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award and a Giller Prize finalist, A Complicated Kindness earned both critical acclaim and a long and steady position on our national bestseller lists.

Als Hattie den Anruf erhält, ist klar, dass sie ihr ungezwungenes Leben in Paris aufgeben muss. Statt Touristen an der Seine zu porträtieren und ihren Freund Mark anzuhimmeln, kehrt sie zurück nach Kanada, um sich um die Kinder ihrer Schwester zu kümmern. Min muss schwer depressiv in eine Klinik eingeliefert werden, und Hattie soll Ersatzmutter für die 11&-jährige Thebes und den 15&-jährigen Logan spielen. Nicht nur dass sie sich dieser Aufgabe nicht gewachsen fühlt, es geht auch wirklich alles schief. Logan fliegt wegen Kontakt zu Gangmitgliedern von der Schule, Thebes färbt sich die Haare lila, kommuniziert nur noch in Hiphopslang und wird beim Klauen erwischt. Hattie entscheidet schnell, dass sie sich aus dem Staub machen und den verschollenen Vater der beiden suchen werden. Auf diesem anarchischen Roadtrip übernachten sie in schäbigen Motels, begegnen kuriosen Typen, geraten in eine Schlägerei, vor allem aber beginnen sie zu reden, wirklich miteinander zu reden, einander Geschichten zu erzählen, und wachsen so, während der Wagen Kilometer um Kilometer frisst, zu einer schrulligen kleinen Patchworkfamilie zusammen. Miriam Toews gelingt es auf unvergleichliche Weise, die Balance zwischen Komödie und Tragödie zu halten, zwischen Slapstick und Rührstück, und somit eine wunderbar komische, tieftraurige Geschichte zu erzählen. Das würdige literarische Pendant zu Little Miss Sunshine.

1500 Einwohner hat Algren und genau so muss es auch bleiben. Ein Einwohner weniger und Algren wäre keine Stadt mehr, ein Einwohner mehr und es wäre womöglich nicht mehr die kleinste. Denn Premierminister John Baert wird am 1. Juli, dem kanadischen Nationalfeiertag, der kleinsten Stadt Kanadas einen Besuch abstatten, und Algrens Bürgermeister Hosea Funk ersehnt insgeheim nichts so sehr wie diesen Besuch - hat seine Mutter ihm doch auf dem Sterbebett anvertraut, John Baert sei sein Vater. Wie aber soll man die Einwohnerzahl halten, wenn die Geburt von Drillingen droht, Knute und ihre Tochter Summer Feelin in den Schoß der Familie zurückkehren, der lang verschollene Max plötzlich wiederauftaucht und Hoseas Sweetheart Lorna Garden beschließt, zu ihm nach Algren zu ziehen? Komisch und anrührend schildert Miriam Toews, wie Hosea sich mit allen Mitteln der steigenden Einwohnerzahl zu erwehren sucht (inklusive Verschiebung der Stadtgrenzen). Er rechnet, überschlägt, stellt neue Berechnungen an, und als dann der 95-jährige Leander Hamm schwer gezeichnet ins Krankenhaus eingeliefert wird, wird Hoseas Nächstenliebe auf eine harte Probe gestellt.

De burgemeester van het kleinste stadje in Canada houdt zich bezig met de problemen van zijn burgers.