All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews (Faber & Faber, £17.99)
Yolandi Von Riesen is making a list: “Airport, car door, buy a shower curtain, get divorced.” She has a lot on her mind. Her successful older sister, concert pianist Elfrieda, is in the psychiatric ward of a Winnipeg hospital following a second suicide attempt. Her two children are looking after themselves in Toronto while her aunt, Tina, has just arrived at the same hospital for an event. “A coronary event,” Yolandi jokes to a group of family friends, though they fail to see the funny side.
Luckily most readers will. All My Puny Sorrows is a narrative of personal crisis—the majority of the action takes place around Elfrieda’s bed—and yet it is hilarious, charming and uncannily soothing. It captures the emotional clarity and shock of ordinariness that can occur even in our darkest moments. Car doors break, shower curtains need replacing, even if it seems ironic that we bother with them at all—like the prisoner dodging a puddle on his way to the gallows.
The Von Riesen family are Canadian Mennonites who were chased out of Russia in the early 20th century. Led by their pioneering eldest daughter, the family begins to break away from the conservative settlement of East Village, Manitoba, a journey that ends when the father kneels in front of a train. “Where does the violence go, if not directly back into our blood and bones,” Yolandi asks. “We reconfigure and we start again.” Toews’s novel, in a black, comic mode that resembles recent fiction by Shalom Auslander, Jenny Offill and Lorrie Moore, gives us human fortitude in its best light.
Yolandi Von Riesen is making a list: “Airport, car door, buy a shower curtain, get divorced.” She has a lot on her mind. Her successful older sister, concert pianist Elfrieda, is in the psychiatric ward of a Winnipeg hospital following a second suicide attempt. Her two children are looking after themselves in Toronto while her aunt, Tina, has just arrived at the same hospital for an event. “A coronary event,” Yolandi jokes to a group of family friends, though they fail to see the funny side.
Luckily most readers will. All My Puny Sorrows is a narrative of personal crisis—the majority of the action takes place around Elfrieda’s bed—and yet it is hilarious, charming and uncannily soothing. It captures the emotional clarity and shock of ordinariness that can occur even in our darkest moments. Car doors break, shower curtains need replacing, even if it seems ironic that we bother with them at all—like the prisoner dodging a puddle on his way to the gallows.
The Von Riesen family are Canadian Mennonites who were chased out of Russia in the early 20th century. Led by their pioneering eldest daughter, the family begins to break away from the conservative settlement of East Village, Manitoba, a journey that ends when the father kneels in front of a train. “Where does the violence go, if not directly back into our blood and bones,” Yolandi asks. “We reconfigure and we start again.” Toews’s novel, in a black, comic mode that resembles recent fiction by Shalom Auslander, Jenny Offill and Lorrie Moore, gives us human fortitude in its best light.
