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Miriam Toews

Miriam Toews Books

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Women Talking

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Irma Voth

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Swing Low

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Fight Night

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“My mother and I were on a plane. Before we left I talked with Elf. She didn't talk at all. I told her things would be okay, truly, that I needed her, that I understood her, that I loved her, that I'd miss her, that I'd be back for her, that being together in Toronto for a while would be amazing, that Nora was really looking forward to it too, that I understood that just because she didn't want to live didn't mean that she necessarily wanted to die it's just that that's sort of how that one goes, that she wanted to die the way she'd lived, with grace and dignity, that I needed her to be patient, to fight a little longer, to hold on, to know she was loved, to know I wanted to help her, that I would help her, that I needed to do some stuff, that mom and I had to go to Aunt Tina's funeral in Vancouver, that I'd be back, that she'd stay with me in Toronto for a while, a total break, that Nic was here now, back in Winnipeg, that he'd see her every day, that I had to go, that I had to know she'd be okay while I was gone, that I would bow down before her suffering with compassion, that she could control her life, that I understood that pain is sometimes psychic, not only physical, that she wanted nothing more than to end it and to sleep forever, that for her life was over but that for me it was still ongoing and that an aspect of it was trying to save her, that the notion of saving her was one that we didn't agree on, that I was willing to do whatever she wanted me to do but only if it was absolutely true that there were no other doors to find, to push against or storm because if there were I'd break every bone in my body running up against that fucking door repeatedly, over and over and over and over.”

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Book:All My Puny Sorrows
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“You've finally written it? That's great! She asked me if I'd read to her from it and I said no. Just a paragraph? No. A sentence? No. Half a sentence! One word? No. A letter? I said okay, that I would read the first letter of the novel. She smiled and closed her eyes and sort of burrowed into her bed like she was preparing herself for a delicious treat. I asked her if she was ready and she nodded, still smiling, eyes closed. I stood and cleared my throat and paused and then began to read. L. She sighed and lifted her chin to the ceiling, opened her eyes and told me it was beautiful, BEAUTIFUL, and true, the best thing I'd written yet.”

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Book:All My Puny Sorrows
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“I googled 'suicide gene' but cancelled the search at the last second. I didn't want to know. Plus, I already knew. People ask: but how does this happen? To think that even with all the security measures we employ these days to keep things out - fences and motion detectors and cameras and sunscreen and vitamins and deadbolts and chains and bike helmets and spinning classes and guards and gates - we can have secret killers lurking inside us? That we can turn on our happy selves the way tumours invade healthy, wholesome organs, the way 'normal' moms suddenly throw their infants off the balcony is...who wants to think about that shit?”

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Book:All My Puny Sorrows
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“We drove down Corydon avenue towards my mother's apartment. How are you doing, she asked me? Fine, fine, I said. I wanted to tell her that I felt I was dying from rage and that I felt guilty about everything and that when I was a kid I woke up every morning singing, that I couldn't wait to leap out of bed and rush out of the house into the magical kingdom that was my world, that dust made visible in sunbeams gave me real authentic joy, that my sparkly golden banana-seated bike with the very high sissy bar took my breath away, the majesty of it, that it was mine, that there was no freer soul in the world than me at age nine, and that now I wake up every morning reminding myself that control is an illusion, taking deep breaths and counting to ten trying to ward off panic attacks and hoping that my own hands hadn't managed to strangle me while I slept.”

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Book:All My Puny Sorrows
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“My answer to Ona's question 'do boys of thirteen and fourteen pose a threat to the girls and women of Molotschna colony?' was yes. Possibly. Every one of us, male or female, poses a potential threat. Thirteen and fourteen-year-old boys are capable of causing great damage to girls and women and to each other. It is a brash age; these boys are possessed of wreckless urges, physical exuberance, an intense curiosity that often results in injury, unbridled emotion including deep tenderness and empathy and not quite enough experience or brain development to fully understand or appreciate the consequences of their actions or words. They are similar to the yearlings, young, awkward, gleeful, and powerful. They are tall, muscular, sexually inquisitive creatures with little to no impulse control. They are children. They are children and they can be taught. I'm a two-bit schoolteacher, a failed farmer, a "shinda", an effeminate man and above all a believer. I believe that with direction, firm love and patience these boys aged thirteen and fourteen are capable of relearning their roles as males in the Molotschna colony”

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Book:Women Talking
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“Forgiveness is moot if not heartfelt. The only thing we must do is protect our God-given souls! We must find it in our own hearts to forgive the men of Molotschna ... and even if the men don't ask for it themselves and even if they claim their innocence all the way to their graves!" "So you believe that maintaining the condition of your own soul is more important than obeying God?" Mirika says, less calm now. "They are the same thing really," Ona says, steadily. "I believe that my soul, my essence, my intangible energy is the presence of God within me and that by bringing peace to my soul I am honouring God. If I can understand how these crimes may have occurred, I am able to forgive these men and I am almost able, certainly from a distance, to pity them... to love them. Love is good and better than retaliation.”

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Author:Miriam Toews
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“I was beginning to understand something I couldn't articulate. It was a jazzy feeling in my chest, a fluttering, a kind of buzzing in my brain. Warmth. Life. The circulation of blood. Sanguinity. I don't know. I understood the enormous risk of telling the truth, how the telling could result in every level of hell reigning down on you, your skin scorched to the bone and then bone to ash and then nothing but a lingering odour of shame and decomposition, but now I was also beginning to understand the new and alien feeling of taking the risk and having the person on the other end of the telling, the listener, say: Bad shit at home? You guys are running away? Yeah, I said. I understand, said, Noehmi.”

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Book:Irma Voth
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“Irma, she said. But I had started to walk away. I heard her say some more things but by then I had yanked my skirt up and was running down the road away from her and begging the wind to obliterate her voice. She wanted to live with me. She missed me. She wanted me to come back home. She wanted to run away. She was yelling all this stuff and I wanted so badly for her to shut up. She was quiet for a second and I stopped running and turned around once to look at her. She was a thimble-sized girl on the road, a speck of a living thing. Her white-blond hair flew around her head like a small fire and it was all I could see because everything else about her blended in with the countryside. He offered you a what? she yelled. An espresso! I yelled back. It was like yelling at a shorting wire or a burning bush. What is it? she said. Coffee! I yelled. Irma, can I come and live-- I turned around again and began to run.”

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Book:Irma Voth
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“It is possible, she says, the men in prison are not guilty of the attacks. But are they guilty of not stopping the attacks? Are they guilty of knowing about the attacks and doing nothing?...How should we know what they're guilty of or not?...But we do know,... We do know that the conditions of Molotschna have been created by man, that these attacks have been made possible, even the conception of these acts, the planning of these attacks, the rationale for these attacks within the minds of the men, because of the circumstances of Molotschna. And those circumstances have been created and ordained by the men,...”

Feminism
Book:Women Talking
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“..I followed her out the door and watched her walk down the road towards home, hers, and the bright yard light, and her own bed, and our parents, and I stood there for a long time because I didn't know where else to go. I stood there long enough to feel the chill of the night. The sky was a blanket of stars.Indifferent. I repeated the ancient song of Nezahualcoytl. I stood there long enough to hear my family singing. Why were they singing at two in the morning? I heard the hight, creaky voice of my mother and the off-key but persistent voices of my little brothers.”

Irma VothMiriam Toews
Author:Miriam Toews
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“A la hija pequeña de Salome, Miep, la violentaron los hombres entre dos y tres veces distintas, pero Peters ha prohibido que la niña, que tiene tres años, reciba tratamiento médico, alegando que el médico difundiría rumores sobre la colonia y la gente sabría lo de las agresiones y convertirían todo el incidente en un escándalo.”

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Book:Women Talking
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“The other day I found her passport in her drawer when I was putting away my dad's laundered handkerchiefs. I wish I hadn't. For the purpose of my story, she should have it with her. I sat on my dad's bed and flipped through page after empty page. No stamps. No exotic locales. No travel-worn smudges or creases. Just the ID information and my mother's black-and-white photo which if it were used in a psychology textbook on the meaning of facial expressions would be labelled: Obscenely, heartbreakingly hopeful.”

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Book:A Complicated Kindness: A Novel
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