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Rating: Summary: Depressing Review: A superbly written but sad and depressing slice of a conservative, fundamentalist and patriarchal society from the viewpoint of the protagonist, Nomi Nickel, who is trying to come to terms with familial and personal collapse, her mother's marital unfaithfulness and eventual abandonment of the family, as well as her father's inability to deal with these realities.
The young girl is left to fend for herself and the reader shares in her pain, alienation, depression, drug abuse and eventual promiscuity. Toews shows that when little bits of the familial unravels and become alienated, the personal is also in danger of falling apart.
The irony is that Toews describes a society that prides itself on its Christianity yet its members adhere and blindly follow narrow church beliefs instead of embracing wider Biblical lessons and truths. She exposes the unhealthy idealization of religion, marriage, parenthood and being Mennonite with loathing, anger, and wry bitterness.
Her characters are a masterful blend of people who claim to be saved by the grace of God, but who negate that hopeful reality with lopsided self-effort, delusion, escapism, fabricating unreal stories (which Toews calls "a beautiful lie") or sorting the debris that others have left, instead of seeking and finding closure, healing and rebirth.
It is a poignant story of imminent tragedy that reminds the reader that being part of a churchy society does not guarantee holiness and being religious does not guarantee that people will love God, themselves or others.
Rating: Summary: This book may, or may not contain a chicken Review: Boy, what an appropriate title for this book. Really, this novel is a study in the contradictions of life: moving ahead into adulthood vs leaving behind childhood with its odd combination of security and non-security. While reading about the downward emotional spiral of a teenager may not sound like the thing you'd want to take to bed each night, trust me, this is one powerful and excellent novel. I was reminded at times of the books of Wally Lamb or even Jackson McCrae (think Lamb's "Shes Come Undone" or McCrae's "The Children's Corner"), but in the end "A Complicated Kindness" really stands on its own. What's also amazing is that it can be read by adolescents and adults alike, and each will probably get something great out of it.
Rating: Summary: Over-rated Review: I found this somewhat tedious. A litany of teenage angst. I wanted her to get on with her life. I expected much more from a prize winner.
Rating: Summary: Why books are better than movies... Review: I just finished A Complicated Kindness, and I feel like I was just given a perfect gift. A Complicated Kindness is story of Nomi, a Mennonite teenager who is trying to keep from falling a part after her mother and sister leave the family. It is a funny, poignant story, and the characters are so fully fleshed out that I think I might have met some of them when I was in high school. If you are in the mood for a book that makes you laugh, cry and think, this is the one for you. Thank you, Miriam Toews!
Rating: Summary: Will eventually sink into the novel Review: I thought that this book was quite hard to get into at the beginning. It started out pretty much describing some things that you might consider as day to day details. But by the time you get to halfway, you will find that you are starting to follow the emotions of Nomi, the leading character, and cannot remove yourself from all the emotions which have been buliding up since the beginning. Although I don't quite like the ending, I still think this is a book worth reading.
Rating: Summary: Funny, sad, comlex and absorbing Review: Narrated by a rebellious Mennonite teenager, Nomi Nickel, this funny, sad, wry, perfectly titled novel (but you have to read it all the way through to see why) takes place in a rural town in Southern Manitoba, where the Mennonites settled to preserve themselves from the corrupting world.
Nomi's elder sister, Tash, and mother, Trudie, have left home ("Half of our family, the better-looking half, is missing.") and Nomi spends her days wondering why her family has disintegrated, pondering her own escape, and expecting to end up working at the chicken processing plant down the road.
The town, East Village, is a tourist destination; a place Americans come to gawk at the "simple life," exemplified in the museum town constructed at the edge of East Village. The real town, however, disappoints the tourists. Cars fill the streets, the inhabitants wear ordinary, if subdued, clothing, and enjoy the advantages of electricity and indoor plumbing.
But Nomi is also confused. "There were so many bizarre categories of things we couldn't do and things we could do and none of it has ever made any sense to me at all." They could watch "Batman," but not "Swiss Family Robinson," could play golf, but no pretend games. Life is meant to be a sober, austere preparation for eternal heaven after death.
"There's not a lot of interest in the present tense here. And it's only slightly disconcerting that everyone's related. If a Mennonite couple divorces do they still get to be cousins? Oh yeah, hilarious. Tash once said to my mom: Oh, so it's wrong to move any part of one's body in time to music but it's perfectly okay to penetrate members of one's extended family? My mother told her not to be silly."
Nomi's mother was a high-spirited woman with a worldly yen, who took her religion seriously. Her inner turmoil remained mostly hidden until Tash began openly and angrily to turn her back on the church. Supporting her, protecting her and sometimes taking her part brought Trudie into open conflict with the church, personified by her brother. "It was like being the sister of Moammar Gaddafi or Joseph Stalin." "The Mouth of Darkness," as Tash and Nomi call him, rules with an iron hand, excommunicating any who disagree with him. Excommunication is akin to living death in this community. Everyone, including members of his or her own immediate family, shuns the excommunicated. They are called ghosts.
Ray, Nomi's father, is a quiet, devout man. He always wears a jacket and tie and sits outside in the evenings in a lawn chair watching the night sky. He writes reminders to himself of things to do the next day and leaves them on his shoes before he goes to bed. He's a man who likes his routine and, says Nomi, frequently, he and Trudie loved each other madly.
So why did she leave? Tash and Trudie, though they didn't leave together or at the same time, have been gone three years when the novel opens. Nomi and Ray are still waiting for them to return. Before they left Nomi was a pious, contented child in growing fear of her sister's salvation. Since then she has become as skeptical and irreverent as Tash; openly flouting "The Mouth's" dictates. She smokes, uses weed and alcohol, stays out till all hours, skips school and has a boyfriend. She hasn't yet tried sex, but is planning to.
Bewildered and wounded, she takes refuge in sarcasm and cherishes tender moments and tenets of family life from her past. She and Ray maintain a loving connection, but they don't talk much. Ray has taken to selling off the furniture and going on long, late-night drives.
The narrative has a realistic, stream-of-consciousness quality as Nomi reflects on her family, trying to trace the path that brought them to this pass. Early on, her high-school teacher, urging her to complete her assignments tells her "that essays and stories generally come, organically, to a preordained ending that is quite out of the writer's control." But Nomi is not convinced. "I don't know about that. I feel that there are so many [endings] to choose from."
This sense of possibility, and the inherent fear of failure that choice carries with it, is a recurring theme. The church limits choice but confers belonging and security. Freedom is not merely a temptation, but an act of will. Under all the sassy humor, these are the issues Nomi grapples with, and those that will, in the end, define her.
Toews, award-winning Canadian author of a memoir about her manic-depressive Mennonite father, "Swing Low: a Life," has written two other wry, humorous and warm-hearted novels, "Summer of My Amazing Luck," and "A Boy of Good Breeding." Her writing is rhythmic and lyrical, her characters captivating, and the portrayal of a strict religious community is complex and absorbing.
Rating: Summary: Curiously welcome rite-of-passage novel Review: Rebelious Mennonite teen grows up in a disintegrating family in Canada. As her family is striped away bit by bit, a curious rite-of-passage occurs. The voice, language, ethos in this novel are interesting and feel authentic. I'll be reading more by this Canadian novelist.
Rating: Summary: Loved this book - one of my top 10 Review: Simply loved this book. It's laugh out loud funny and I found myself shaking my head at the genius of the writing. Had me hooked from the first page.
Rating: Summary: Rich and Rewarding Review: Sometimes bleak, sometimes outrageously funny A COMPLICATED KINDNESS is an excellent book. Fans of authors who capture the comedy and drama of youthful angst with honesty and vividness (as with MY FRACTURED LIFE or PREP), will devour this book. It is enjoyably paced and the characters are rich and rewarding.
Rating: Summary: God, I love this book. Review: This is one of those stories that just reached out and grabbed me. You would think it would be difficult for a male brought up as a primarily agnostic Seattle-suburban-Northwesterner to relate to a story of a female Mennonite small-town-Canadian. But it wasn't hard at all to relate to. And that's one example of how wonderful this book is. Some say they find this book depressing; I would say that it is conflicted and ultimately hopeful.
I also read "Swing Low : A Life." I like "A Complicated Kindness" better (not surprising since I generally prefer fiction to real life), but both books amaze me with Toews ability and willingness to lay her life bare.
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