Miriam Toews
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews is about the love between sisters and the desperate struggle of one sister to save the life of her sibling who is determined to kill herself.
The novel unfolds in the first-person voice of Yolanda. She is twice divorced, the mother of two teenage children, and an author of young adult novels. Her sister, Elfrieda, is a beautiful and highly successful concert pianist, married to a sensitive man who dotes on her. On the surface, it appears as though Elfrieda has made a success of her life and has everything going for her. But that is not the case. The novel charts Elfrieda’s repeated attempts to kill herself and Yolanda’s repeated attempts to rescue her.
One would think a novel about several attempts to end one’s life would be bleak. But the novel sizzles with humor and dazzling dialogue. All is filtered through the lens of Yolanda, the first-person narrator. She flashes back to her past in a Canadian Mennonite community and includes humorous descriptions of family encounters with somber-looking church elders who try to steer them away from their errant path. The flashbacks are energetic and engaging. Yolanda’s encounters with hospital staff after yet another of Elfrieda’s suicide attempts is realistic and vividly captures her frustration with petty rules and medical personnel who show little sympathy or understanding for her sister’s plight.
The narrator’s voice lifts the novel from being a bleak exploration of the tension between those who are weary of life and want to end it and those who love them and want them to live. Yolanda tells the story in a running series of anecdotes and dialogues without quotations marks to generate a sense of immediacy—as though we see and hear as Yolanda sees and hears. She is entertaining, funny, intelligent, witty, conflicted, angry, and able to laugh at herself and at the darker aspects of life. Above all, she is totally and unequivocally and passionately devoted to her sister. The close-knit, loving sister relationship is masterfully captured in their dialogue, their back-and-forth banter, their ability to communicate with one another without speaking and finish one another’s thoughts. The scenes with the sisters are tender, heart-breaking, and soaked with unconditional love. Yolanda is torn between wanting her sister to live versus wanting to help her do the one thing she desperately wants to do.
Miriam Toews’ father and sister committed suicide. It is a testament to her skill as an author that with compassion, honesty, empathy, and humor, she is able to turn a personal tragedy into a profoundly moving and inspiring work of fiction.
A triumphant achievement.