A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toewes

Published 2004 by Counterpoint

246 pages

Publisher's Summary:

Left alone with her sad, peculiar father, Nomi Nickel's days are spent piecing together why her mother and sister have disappeared and contemplating her inevitable career at Happy Family Farms, a chicken slaughterhouse on the outskirts of East Village, a town founded by Mennonites on the cold, flat plains of Manitoba, Canada. This darkly funny novel is the world according to Nomi, a bewildered and wry sixteen-year-old trapped in a town governed by fundamentalist religion and in the shattered remains of a family it destroyed. In Nomi's droll, refreshing voice, we're told the story of an eccentric, loving family that falls apart as each member lands on a collision course with the only community any of them have ever known.

My Thoughts: 

When I put together the list of books for my book club to read this year, one of my tasks was to choose a book written by a Canadian author. I chose one, read it, and decided it was too dark. And then I looked and looked for a book by a Canadian author that was set in Canada and not too dark. Having enjoyed Toews' Women Talking and The Flying Troutmans, I picked this book. Which is, if not dark, bleak. Although it is loaded with dark humor. 

In a small, restrictive town, it should be no surprise that things happen slowly in this book with hardly a ripple in the pool that is life in East Village. A daughter leaves home. A mother is excommunicated and leaves town. A father, unable to deal with the loss of the love of his life, slowly comes apart. A young teen, adrift with no one to really care about her well-being, begins to fail in school and stay out nights doing more and more drugs.

A lot of reviews of this book compare it to The Catcher In The Rye, a book I've never read. But I'm given the impression that Holden Caulfield, angsty teen, has not particular reason for being disaffected. Nomi, on the other hand, has had her life turned upside down. Growing up concerned that one or the other of her family members might be headed for eternal damnation, Nomi was happy. She admired her sister and loved her parents even though she knew how deeply unhappy her sister, Tash, was in East Village and how mixed-up thing seemed to be. After Tash and their mother leave, Nomi gradually begins to see how constricted her life will be if she stays in East Village and how trapped she has become. Tash has taught her "that some people can leave and some can't and those who can will always be infinitely cooler than those who can't and I'm one of the ones who can't because you're one of the ones who did and there's this old guy in a wool suit sitting in an empty house who has no one but me now thank you very, very, very much." 

Religion rules the village and Nomi's life. It's a complicated thing - real life is nothing like the life American tourists come to the village to see. It's so different that the villagers have set up a separate part of town where the tourists can see villagers acting out the way life used to be. But the young people in East Village behave very much like teenagers every where, especially those who feel trapped in a small town with no good prospects. Which makes me wonder about the Mennonites I see here sometimes. Are they really who they appear to be in when they are in public? 

The days seem to drag on, every day much the same as the other - walking around town, driving around town, sitting in his truck with her boyfriend, visiting her friend Lydia in the hospital, getting kicked out of school again and again for being mouthy to the teachers, and trying to help her father stay afloat. In many ways, as I was reading, it felt like we were treading water and it was work to keep going. 

In doing some research to put together discussion questions for my book club, the question of what the title means kept coming up and, as with so many books, there were a lot of different theories. Not until just this moment did I finally come up with my own opinion about what the title means. But I'm sorry to say that I can't tell you what that theory is because it has to do with the end of the book, an ending I can't say I thought much of until this theory occurred to me. And now I'm left wondering if that complicated kindness with have been worth what it cost. 

Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie Macdonald

Fall On Your Knees by Ann -Marie Macdonald

Published January 1997 by Simon and Schuster

Source: checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:

The Piper family is steeped in secrets, lies, and unspoken truths. At the eye of the storm is one secret that threatens to shake their lives — even destroy them. 

Set on stormy Cape Breton Island off Nova Scotia, Fall on Your Knees is an internationally acclaimed multigenerational saga that chronicles the lives of four unforgettable sisters. Theirs is a world filled with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love.

My Thoughts:  

When I was selecting books for my book club I was looking to find a book by a Canadian author set in Canada and came across this book. It sounded like just the kind of book we'd find a lot to talk about so I added it to our list and picked it up early to check it out. The verdict? It's definitely a book with a lot to talk about. But we won't be talking about it. 

Fall On Your Knees is a beautifully written book, filled with vivid imagery of two vastly different islands - Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia and Manhattan - and the people who inhabited them in the early 1900's. Miners, immigrants, dreamers, survivors. It is the story of family, love, race, religion, ethnicity, abuse, death, obsession, mental illness, determination, addiction, forbidden love, dreams, and nightmares. Macdonald has created some characters that will stay with me for a long time - especially two sisters and their niece who must survive the incredible loss and life with the monster who caused all of their pain. 

As the story moves back and forth in time, some things become revealed to readers that are not revealed to the characters, other secrets are held back, leaving questions to be answered. Unfortunately, as the story came to the tipping point, Macdonald chose to tell the story in a new way that pulled all focus away from the characters that I'd become invested in. While that piece of the story was integral to getting Macdonald to where she wanted to go with her story, I wish she had found some other way to get there without breaking away from the other stories. Still, when I came to the final few dozen pages of the book, it was more than satisfied with the way Macdonald closed out her story of the Piper family. 

Now, back to why my book club won't be reading this book. In 2002 Oprah Winfrey chose this book for her book club. If you know anything about the kinds of books Oprah used to chose for her readers, you may begin to understand what's in this book that caused my reaction. Let's just say, we have members who have young children. As a mom myself, I couldn't have them reading this book. 

Africaville by Jeffrey Colvin

Africaville by Jeffrey Colvin
Read by Robin Miles
Published December 2019 by HarperCollins US
Source: audiobook checked out from my local library

Publisher's Summary:
Structured as a triptych, Africaville chronicles the lives of three generations of the Sebolt family—Kath Ella, her son Omar/Etienne, and her grandson Warner—whose lives unfold against the tumultuous events of the twentieth century from the Great Depression of the 1930s, through the social protests of the 1960s to the economic upheavals in the 1980s.

A century earlier, Kath Ella’s ancestors established a new home in Nova Scotia. Like her ancestors, Kath Ella’s life is shaped by hardship—she struggles to conceive and to provide for her family during the long, bitter Canadian winters. She must also contend with the locals’ lingering suspicions about the dark-skinned “outsiders” who live in their midst.

Kath Ella’s fierce love for her son, Omar, cannot help her overcome the racial prejudices that linger in this remote, tight-knit place. As he grows up, the rebellious Omar refutes the past and decides to break from the family, threatening to upend all that Kath Ella and her people have tried to build. Over the decades, each successive generation drifts further from Africaville, yet they take a piece of this indelible place with them as they make their way to Montreal, Vermont, and beyond, to the deep South of America.

As it explores notions of identity, passing, cross-racial relationships, the importance of place, and the meaning of home, Africaville tells the larger story of the black experience in parts of Canada and the United States.

My Thoughts:
Africaville is one of those books from which I wanted both more and less. More depths to the characters, fewer side trips that only served to distract. More focus on the story in Canada, less time spent on a story line that seemed improbable.

I'm not opposed to sweeping family sagas (c'mon, one of my first favorite books was Collen McCullough's The Thorn Birds) but they have to have a focal point and there has to be a natural progression from one generation to the next. In Africaville, it felt more like Colville had things he wanted to say, research that he wanted to work into his novel and it rushed his story and overtook his characters. The story of the freed Caribbean slaves who settled in Nova Scotia is an interesting, little-known bit of history and I wish Colvin would have stepped further back to that time to start his story instead of trying to work it in here and there. Instead he also wants to work in the New Confederates of the American South, which has him, throughout the book, referring to a character who will come into play much later in the book.

There's a lot to recommend Colvin as a writer. He certainly hits on some interesting parts of history that I've not read about before and I appreciated that he wanted to explore that idea of interracial relationships and what happens to the children of those relationships as they try to find their place. If he had kept his focus more on the family and delved deeper into the characters that made up the family (we never do learn why Omar/Etienne is so rebellious; we are left to guess). It's an ambitious debut and I hope Colvin will continue to look for the new stories to tell.

Side by Side by Anita Kushwaha

Side by Side by Anita Kushwaha
Published November 2018 by Inanna Publications
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher, through TLC Book Tours, in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
Kavita Gupta is a woman in transition. When her troubled older brother, Sunil, disappears, she does everything in her power to find him, convinced that she can save him. Ten days later, the police arrive at her door to inform her that Sunil’s body has been found. Her world is devastated. She finds herself in crisis mode, trying to keep the pieces of her life from falling apart even more. As she tries to cope with her loss, the support system around her begins to unravel. Her parents’ uneasy marriage seems more precarious. Her health is failing as her unprocessed trauma develops into more sinister conditions. Her marriage suffers as her husband is unable to relate to her loss. She bears her burden alone, but after hitting her lowest point, she knows she needs to find a better way of coping. Desperate for connection, she reaches out to a bereavement group, where she meets Hawthorn, a free-spirited young man with whom she discovers a deep connection through pain. After being blindsided by a devastating marital betrayal, she wonders if a fresh start is possible in the wake of tragedy. Will she escape her problems and start over? Or will she face the challenges of rebuilding the life she already has? Side by Side is a story about loss, growth and the search for meaning in the wake of tragedy, illuminated through one woman’s journey from harm to care.


My Thoughts:
You know how often I've forgotten what a book is about before I read it; this book takes that up a notch. I was meant to read and review it a few weeks ago but there was a problem getting the book from the publisher, moving my review back to the point where I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into. This meant that, on the heels of our dear friends having lost their son in an accident, picking up a book and finding out that it was about the death of a young man was initially a bit of a gut punch. I wasn't sure I could read it. I am so glad that I stuck with it.

I don't know what experience Kushwaha has with grief; but, my god, did it feel like she had to have lived through the loss of a loved one as intimately and honestly as this book feels. I felt like the ladies at TLC Book Tours had put this book into my hands at this time to help me understand exactly what my friends might be feeling. When Kavita finds her mother crouched on Sunil's bedroom floor, her head resting on his bed, and his urn protected between two couch cushions on the bed, I could easily imagine this being the way a mother might react. Kushwaha's description of Kavita's guilt, her need to help her parents through their own grief, and talks with her brother's spirit are heartbreaking.

What really felt like Kushwaha had reached the truth of  grief were the three "people" Kavita began carrying inside her: Anchor, Black Gloom, and Blaze. We're all familiar with Elisabeth Kugler-Ross' five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But Anchor, Black Gloom, and Blaze make it clear that those "stages" aren't necessarily stages, one doesn't necessarily pass through them one at a time. In the two weeks since our friends lost their son, I know they have experienced denial, anger, and depression. Two weeks later, I can't imagine anyone expecting them to go on with their lives as if nothing has happened, yet that is exactly what Nirav, Kavita's husband, expects from her. And his family if unwilling to acknowledge that Sunil is even dead; they are more concerned about when the couple might start a family. It's no wonder that Kavita would reach out for understanding from others who might be more sympathetic and I was so hoping that she would find finally find the support she so desperately needed.

I'm certain that when I was pitched this book, the ladies at TLC Book Tours made sure to tell me it was about an Indian family (they know me so well!) plus the book is largely set in Canada (and I do love to find great books from Canadian authors). The truth of the matter is, though, that this book is about a part of life that is universal. Kavita's heritage, the country she lives in, are just parts of the story but her grief is without country or heritage.

Two quibbles: first, some of the characters, particularly in Nirav's family, felt a bit like stereotypes; secondly, there were quite a lot of grammatical errors and typos in the book. I kept checking, thinking that this might not be a finished copy but it is and it's a shame that a book this good is handicapped in this way. Still, neither of these was enough to impact my impression of the book and I raced through it in just a couple of days.

Thanks to the ladies from TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions, check out the full tour.

Anita Kushwaha grew up in Aylmer, Quebec. Her road to publication included a fulfilling career in academia, where she studied human geography at Carleton University and earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. She is also a graduate of the Humber School for Writers creative writing program. Her first novel, Side by Side, won an Independent Publisher Book Awards Silver Medal for Multicultural Fiction in 2019. She is also the author of a novella, The Escape Artist. Her second novel, Caught in a Lie, will be published in January 2020 by HarperCollins Canada. She lives in Ottawa.

Find out more about Anita at her website, and connect with her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Purchase Links Amazon | Barnes and Noble | IndieBound | Chapters/Indigo

A Handbook For Beautiful People by Jennifer Spruit

A Handbook For Beautiful People by Jennifer Spruit
Published November 2017 by Inanna Publications
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours

Publisher's Summary:
When twenty-two year old Marla finds herself unexpectedly pregnant, she wishes for a family, but faces precariousness: an uncertain future with her talented, exacting boyfriend, Liam; constant danger from her roommate, Dani, a sometime prostitute and entrenched drug addict; and the unannounced but overwhelming needs of her younger brother, Gavin, whom she has brought home for the first time from deaf school. Forcing her hand is Marla’s fetal alcohol syndrome, which sets her apart but also carries her through.

When Marla loses her job and breaks her arm in a car accident, Liam asks her to marry him. It’s what she’s been waiting for: a chance to leave Dani, but Dani doesn’t take no for an answer. Marla stays strong when her mother shows up drunk, creates her own terms when Dani publicly shames her, and then falls apart when Gavin attempts suicide. It rains, and then pours, and when the Bow River finally overflows, flooding Marla’s entire neighbourhood, she is ready to admit that she wants more for her child than she can possibly give right now. Marla’s courage to ask for help and keep her mind open transforms everyone around her, cementing her relationships and proving to those who had doubted her that having a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder does not make a person any less noble, wise or caring.


My Thoughts:
Those ladies at TLC Book Tours know me so well. They know when they've got a book that's right in my wheel house. And they know that I'm usually game for something that will push me out of it. This one definitely pushed me out of it. So many characters that I couldn't relate to, that, frankly, weren't all that likable. Oh, heck, some of them weren't likable at all (I'm looking at you, Dani).

I started this book at exactly the wrong time to start a book that wasn't going to be an easy read. My life has been extra busy, my brain extra distracted. It took me a week to read 100 pages of this book. I wasn't enjoying it, wasn't getting into it at all. But I needed to write a review so I needed to push through it. Yesterday, I did something I never do - I read the last page. If I couldn't get through the book in time, at least I would know how it ends so I could write a better review. And that's when I realized that I was beginning to get into these characters. Because I didn't like the ending at all; it didn't feel right for the characters I'd been reading about.

So instead of writing this review so it posted this morning, as I would normally post reviews, I decided I needed to finish the book. All 167 pages I had left to read in time to still get a review posted today. Here's the surprising thing - reading that last page turned out to be the best thing. Because, instead of just speed reading enough to write a review, I read this book. And those characters? The ones I didn't particularly care for? I found myself caring very much for them, feeling their pain, understanding their anger and addictions.

That's an impressive feat from a debut author. I don't know what Spruit's background is but she seems to very much understand what makes a what makes her characters tick, what drives someone to addiction, and how to make readers feel empathetic.

Thanks to the ladies at TLC Book Tours for pushing me out of my comfort zone again. To read other reviews of this book, check out the full book tour here.

Jennifer Spruit was born in Lloydminster, AB/SK, and now lives in Courtenay, BC. She attended the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of British Columbia. Jennifer enjoys teaching kids, playing music, and paddling a blue canoe. This is her first novel. Find out more about Jennifer at her website.

Dinner With Lisa by R. L. Prendergast

Dinner With Lisa by R. L. Prendergast
Published October 2011 by Dekko Publishing
Source: this copy courtesy of the publisher and Premier Virtual Author Book Tours


After the death of his wife, Joseph Gaston boards a train with his four children and heads across Canada to Philibuster, Alberta where he hopes to make a better life for his family during the Great Depression. Joseph has a letter promising a job, a few dollars and a brother and sister-in-law who have offered to help.

Things get off to a rocky start when Joseph angers the chief of police by helping a hobo hopping off the train in Philibuster and then reports for his new job only to be told the position has already been filled. While his boys seem to flourish and his daughters become deeply attached to his sister-in-law, Joseph has a much harder time of it. The pressure of providing food and shelter for his family while maintaining his integrity, staying clear of the chief of police, and come to terms with his growing feelings for a Beth Hoogaboom, a woman who doesn't entirely fit in herself, weighs heavily on Joseph until one night he finally snaps.

Prendergast can certainly write - his description of a Black Blizzard is terrifying, I was certain I could navigate Philibuster's streets and recognize the landmarks clearly, and his portrayal of the life of the men and women left destitute and hopeless was heartbreaking. I cheered for Joseph and his family, I adored Beth Hoogaboom, I laughed at the antics of Joseph's brother, Henri and his friend, Raven.

Prendergast has clearly done his research and Dinner With Lisa makes the reader draw parallels between the time period the book covers and the present day.

"As foreigners in a country where anyone not of British descent was deemed second-class, most Italian men could only find jobs in the most strenuous and poorest paying work situations."

I couldn't help but think of the lives of Mexican immigrants as I read this. And here, in what I think may be an actual piece of radio transcript, the reader can't help but think of the current world crisis:

"...this world crisis would be brought to a swift conclusion if the world's leaders had the courage to say to their countries, "We have lived beyond our means too long, and must have the boldness to pursue such actions as might prove painful in the short term but will be to everyone's benefit in the long."

I like a book that makes me think and you can clearly see that this one did. For the most part, Prendergast managed to do make these statements without coming off as preachy.

I'm was torn on what I wanted to say about this one. So torn that I've actually been scouring the internet to see what others thought of it - something I never do once I've started a book and before I'm done with my own review. In my searching, I found a site with an author's note detailing Prendergast's inspirations for writing this book and it became clear to me why I was having problems with this book. After his last book, Prendergast thought he was done with writing, but the stories his parents and aunts and uncles had told about growing up were stuck in his head, begging for an outlet. His great-uncle's stories about World War I, his father's stories about life on a dairy farm and his mother's stories about a neighborhood corner store all found their way into Dinner With Lisa. The problem with writing a novel this way is that it can be difficult to pull all of those tales together into a cohesive story. In Dinner With Lisa I felt like Prendergast has simply tried to do too much, there were too many distractions. As he tried to flesh out secondary characters with full backgrounds, Prendergast kept pulling me away from the Gaston family and the struggle of the common man during this terrible time and those were the stories I really wanted to read, the stories I really wanted to get caught up in.

Thanks to Teddy and Premier Virtual Author Blog Tours for including me on this tour. For other opinions of this book and to learn more about  Prendergast's work, check out Premier's website.

The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley

The Tricking of Freya by Christina Sunley
352 pages
Published March 2009 by St Martin's Press

Freya is the daughter of an Icelandic-Canadian and an American. Her father is dead, her mother has kept her away from her Canadian relatives for eight years. Then one summer her mother finally relents and the two travel to Gimli, where Freya finally gets to meet her grandmother (the keeper of the family records) and her unpredictable aunt, Birdie. Almost as soon as they have arrived, Freya accidentally breaks almost all of her grandmother's tea cups. When her mother sees what has happened, and the blood on Freya, she passes out, hitting her head. Although she eventually comes home from the hospital, she is never the same and Freya spends the rest of her life feeling that her mother's condition is her fault and it entirely changes the person she becomes.

Birdie is intense about maintaining the family's Icelandic heritage, particularly that of the writers. She is appalled that Freya does not speak the language or know the myths and makes it her job to indoctrinate the young girl during the summers. Freya absorbs it all and, despite Birdie's erratic behavior, adores her aunt. Until the summer when Birdie tricks Freya into joining her on a terrifying journey, Freya turns her back on all things Icelandic.

Twenty years later, Freya is leading an isolated and lonely life in Manhattan, when she is called back to Gimli to help celebrate her grandmother's birthday. While there, she uncovers the tip of a major family secret. Unraveling the secret will require a trip to Iceland, across it's lava fields and vast glaciers, until Freya uncovers the shocking truth.

This book is a finely crafted exploration of the immigrant experience. Like the great poets she is writing about, Sunley's writing is often poetic. The plot is unique, the characters intriguing. Although I had figured out the major twist before I reached it, it was no less devastating and Sunley was able to surprise throughout with smaller twists.

This is Sunley's debut novel. Her family history is Icelandic but she was not raised with family, not raised with the family stories that fill Freya's life. But she's heard enough to know that there was a story here and headed off to Iceland to do research. And it shows. At times it can feel like Sunley must have included everything she learned and I'll admit that there were places that I began skimming. But two days after I finished this book, I say a documentatry on t.v. set in Iceland. Iceland was exactly what I had been picturing in my head throughout the book. And it was then I realized what a superb job Sunley had done.

For more on this book and an interview with the author, check out Bookworm With A View here.