New Releases by Miriam Toews

Elfrieda et Yolandi, deux sœurs issues d’une petite communauté mennonite de Winnipeg, au sud du Canada. La première, pianiste renommée, mariée à un homme aimant et dévoué souffre de dépression. La musique semble d’abord lui offrir un répit, jouer du piano la maintient en contact avec le monde extérieur, mais bientôt cette source de plaisir devient, elle aussi, un motif d’angoisse. La seconde, romancière enchaînant les déboires amoureux et financiers, fait son possible pour venir en aide à sa sœur. Avec justesse et empathie, Miriam Toews dresse le portrait de ces deux personnages et de la relation unique que les lie dans un roman plein de poésie. « Plein d’excentricité, de références littéraires pertinentes et accessibles, la tragicomédie et l’humanité de Pauvres petits chagrins rappellent le meilleur de John Irving. » The Telegraph « Un roman rare de par son jeu d’esprit sombrement pétillant. » The Guardian « Pauvres petits chagrins est un livre sur la relation entre deux sœurs. Une représentation précise et touchante de cette situation complexe. » The Globe and Mail

From the award-winning author of A Complicated Kindness comes a heart-wrenching yet wryly funny story about setting out on the road to self-discovery, and finding the strength to survive in the face of immeasurable loss. Nineteen-year-old Irma Voth lives in a Mennonite community in northern Mexico, surrounded by desert and both physically and culturally isolated from the surrounding towns and cities. It’s been six years since her family up and left Canada to escape the prying eyes of the government and preserve their religious freedom, but Irma still misses the minor freedoms she had in their small town. She even misses the cold. This new life has not been an easy one, and Irma finds herself deserted by her husband of one year, who has left to pursue a life of drug-running, instead of working her family’s farm. The most devastating blow for Irma is that he didn’t take her with him, take her away, so now she’s left to live under her father’s domineering rule alone. Things change for Irma when a film crew moves into the empty house next door. They’ve come to make a movie about the Mennonite community, and have made a deal with Irma’s father to stay on their land. The director enlists Irma to work for them as a translator, as she can speak not only Spanish and English but Plattdeutsch, or Low German, the language of her people. At first bemused by the ragged and absurd crewmembers, Irma comes to embrace the passion and creative freedom of their world – but in doing so brings on the wrath of her father, who is determined to keep her from it at all costs. When Irma’s thirteen-year-old sister Aggie begins to come by and spend time with the crew, their father is sent over the edge with rage, and Irma is forced to make a hard decision to save not only herself, but her younger sister, and to break the dark chain of violence holding her family. The girls flee to the capital, Mexico City, not knowing where they’ll find food or shelter, let alone build a life, but knowing for the first time that they are free to make that choice. And even as they begin to understand the truth of the tragedy that has their family in its grip, Irma and Aggie use their love as a source of strength to help each other move on from their past lives and work toward a future that can truly become anything they want it to be.

Die grosse kanadische Autorin Miriam Toews wuchs in einer mennonitischen Familie in Manitoba auf. In ihrem neuen Roman kehrt sie zu ihren Wurzeln zurück und vollbringt ein literarisches Wunder: Mit atemberaubender Eindringlichkeit erzählt sie die Geschichte einer jungen Frau, die lernt, was es heisst, sich selbst zu vergeben.

"A 16-year-old rebels against the conventions of her strict Mennonite community and tries to come to terms with the collapse of her family ..."--Publishers Weekly.

From the acclaimed Giller Prize Finalist and Governor General’s Award Winner: a delightfully funny and charming second novel about Canada’s smallest town. Life in Winnipeg didn’ t go as planned for Knute and her daughter. But living back in Algren with her parents and working for the longtime mayor, Hosea Funk, has its own challenges: Knute finds herself mixed up with Hosea’s attempts to achieve his dream of meeting the Prime Minister — even if that means keeping the town’s population at an even 1500. Bringing to life small-town Canada and all its larger-than-life characters, A Boy of Good Breeding is a big-hearted, hilarious novel about finding out where you belong.

Days after being dumped by her boyfriend Marc in Paris - he was heading off to an ashram and said we could communicate telepathically - Hattie hears her sister Min has been checked into a psychiatric hospital, and finds herself flying back to ...

Een jonge Canadese reist met haar neefje en nichtje, een stel vroegwijze pubers wier moeder in een psychiatrisch ziekenhuis verblijft, door Noord-Amerika op zoek naar hun vader.

Découvrant à son retour de Paris que sa soeur doit de nouveau être hospitalisée en psychiatrie, une jeune femme part avec sa nièce, Thebes, douze ans, et son neveu, Logan, quinze ans, aux États-Unis à la recherche de leur père. Un voyage rempli d''incidents loufoques où les trois héros, aux caractères passablement déjantés, apprendront à cohabiter malgré leurs différences. [SDM].

1500 Einwohner hat Algren und genau so muss es auch bleiben. Ein Einwohner weniger und Algren wäre keine Stadt mehr, ein Einwohner mehr und es wäre womöglich nicht mehr die kleinste. Denn Premierminister John Baert wird am 1. Juli, dem kanadischen Nationalfeiertag, der kleinsten Stadt Kanadas einen Besuch abstatten, und Algrens Bürgermeister Hosea Funk ersehnt insgeheim nichts so sehr wie diesen Besuch - hat seine Mutter ihm doch auf dem Sterbebett anvertraut, John Baert sei sein Vater. Wie aber soll man die Einwohnerzahl halten, wenn die Geburt von Drillingen droht, Knute und ihre Tochter Summer Feelin in den Schoß der Familie zurückkehren, der lang verschollene Max plötzlich wiederauftaucht und Hoseas Sweetheart Lorna Garden beschließt, zu ihm nach Algren zu ziehen? Komisch und anrührend schildert Miriam Toews, wie Hosea sich mit allen Mitteln der steigenden Einwohnerzahl zu erwehren sucht (inklusive Verschiebung der Stadtgrenzen). Er rechnet, überschlägt, stellt neue Berechnungen an, und als dann der 95-jährige Leander Hamm schwer gezeichnet ins Krankenhaus eingeliefert wird, wird Hoseas Nächstenliebe auf eine harte Probe gestellt.

Discusses the novel, "A Complicated Kindness".

De burgemeester van het kleinste stadje in Canada houdt zich bezig met de problemen van zijn burgers.

"One morning Mel Toews put on his coat and hat and walked out of town, prepared to die. A loving husband and father, faithful member of the Mennonite church, and immensely popular school teacher, he was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggle, he could no longer face the darkness of manic depression. Now his daughter Miriam, an award-winning writer, has given her father a voice for his whole story. In Swing Low, Miriam recounts Mel''s life as she imagines he would have told it, right up to the day he took his final walk. Toews takes us deep inside the experience of depression, but she also gives us winsome and hilarious tales of country life: growing up on a farm, courting a wife, becoming a teacher, and rearing a strong, happy family in the midst of private torment." --

Em ''Uma bondade complicada'', Nomi é uma menina de 16 anos, de uma comunidade menonita, que é abandonada pela irmã e pela mãe da noite para o dia. Quando sua vida na cidade se torna insuportável, é surpreendida pela partida do pai. Decidida a se libertar, ela descobre que a mãe foi vítima da chantagem de um professor. Uma leitura ao mesmo tempo comovente e engraçada sobre a busca de uma adolescente dos anos 70.