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A review by thebacklistborrower
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
5.0
I loved this book so much, I kicked myself for not reading it when it was new and being hyped but back in 2014/15. But then again, if I had, I wouldn’t have listened to this version narrated by Erin Moon, and missed out on that too. This book floored me in so many ways. Listening to it on my commute, I spent many mornings sitting in my car at the office listening until the last possible minute before scurrying to my office and starting my day.
CW: depression, suicide, anorexia
The book follows Yolandi, first a girl in a conservative Mennonite community, and later, a middle-aged woman with two teenage children who sees herself as a failure at life, especially when compared to her sister Elfrieda, a world-renowned concert pianist. Except Elfrieda suffers from depression and is trying to die, and Yolandi desperately wants her to keep on living. Yolandi is the unceasing heroine of the story: her sister’s friend and advocate in the Winnipeg hospital, ensuring their mother Lotte gets rest, strategizing home care and next steps with Elfrieda’s loving husband, and keeping in touch with her 18 and 15-year-old children, living on their own in Toronto while Yolandi is away. Except she suffers too: navigating a divorce with the father of her younger child, attempting to write a “serious” book to follow up her YA rodeo fiction series, and spiraling around burnout herself as she helps everybody but herself.
All these characters are given depth through flashbacks to younger times, through tender, funny, and fraught vignettes with Yolandi, and by the end of the book, feel like they are fully real people.The writing, coupled with Erin Moon’s masterful narration, made me feel like on my drives I was sitting right in the hospital, right at the kitchen table, or right in the concert hall.
A book about struggles, sorrows, humour, but mostly, love, this book will engross any reader or listener and leads to a climax that will feel not unlike the ground falling out from under you. Absolutely recommend a read, and definitely a listen, to anybody who hasn't experienced the tragicomedy of this novel yet.
CW: depression, suicide, anorexia
The book follows Yolandi, first a girl in a conservative Mennonite community, and later, a middle-aged woman with two teenage children who sees herself as a failure at life, especially when compared to her sister Elfrieda, a world-renowned concert pianist. Except Elfrieda suffers from depression and is trying to die, and Yolandi desperately wants her to keep on living. Yolandi is the unceasing heroine of the story: her sister’s friend and advocate in the Winnipeg hospital, ensuring their mother Lotte gets rest, strategizing home care and next steps with Elfrieda’s loving husband, and keeping in touch with her 18 and 15-year-old children, living on their own in Toronto while Yolandi is away. Except she suffers too: navigating a divorce with the father of her younger child, attempting to write a “serious” book to follow up her YA rodeo fiction series, and spiraling around burnout herself as she helps everybody but herself.
All these characters are given depth through flashbacks to younger times, through tender, funny, and fraught vignettes with Yolandi, and by the end of the book, feel like they are fully real people.The writing, coupled with Erin Moon’s masterful narration, made me feel like on my drives I was sitting right in the hospital, right at the kitchen table, or right in the concert hall.
A book about struggles, sorrows, humour, but mostly, love, this book will engross any reader or listener and leads to a climax that will feel not unlike the ground falling out from under you. Absolutely recommend a read, and definitely a listen, to anybody who hasn't experienced the tragicomedy of this novel yet.