Reading for Leisure #9: Toews

TOEWS, Mariam: 2004. A Complicated Kindness. Random House, Toronto.

This book, through and through, was very very good. However, I must warn that it is also clinical and depressing. In reading that last three chapters I cried the whole way through.

In a nut shell, this book is about how their (Mennonite) society tears an otherwise pretty okay family apart. The story does end with a hint of hope but only in a dream of one day reuniting, which is only possible if the other family members did not commit suicide.

Yeah, pretty depressing. Really pretty depressing. BUT oh, so good. I think it's one of the best books I've read out of the 9 so far since my graduation.

This is a depressing story but is quite funny the whole way through. I'd read it again for the funny bits.

This is totally my kind of book, sarcastic and satirical.

I also found it particularly sad because I was also raised by my father and my mother left the family, and I had a friend that committed suicide (the character in this book does not).

I really don't know how I can elaborate further all I want to say is that it was good! My God. And I like how even though the Religion failed them, the father and the daughter still had faith. I also like that the family, even though they were gruesomely torn apart, they all still love each other, or at least that's what one wants to believe.