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    All My Puny Sorrows
    All My Puny Sorrows
    All My Puny Sorrows
    Audiobook11 hours

    All My Puny Sorrows

    Written by Miriam Toews

    Narrated by Erin Moon

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the bestselling author of Women Talking, a "wrenchingly honest, darkly funny novel" (Entertainment Weekly).

    Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfrieda's life is enviable (she's a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, and happily married) and Yolandi's a mess (she's divorced and broke, with two teenagers growing up too quickly), they are fiercely close-raised in a
    Mennonite household and sharing the hardship of Elf's desire to end her life. After Elf's latest attempt, Yoli must quickly determine how to keep her family from falling apart while facing a profound question: what do you do for a loved one who truly wants to die?

    All My Puny Sorrows is a deeply personal story that is as much comedy as it is tragedy, a goodbye grin from the friend who taught you how to live.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJan 2, 2015
    ISBN9781490658063
    All My Puny Sorrows
    Author

    Miriam Toews

    Miriam Toews is the author of the bestselling novels All My Puny Sorrows, Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans, Irma Voth, Fight Night, and one work of nonfiction, Swing Low: A Life. She is winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award. She lives in Toronto.

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    Reviews for All My Puny Sorrows

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    • 3/5
      This was a tough novel to read. Which isn't to say it's bad. It's not. At all. In fact, it's lovely and lyrical and beautiful. It's just tough. It chronicles the tale of two sisters, Yolandia (Yoli) and her older sister, Elfrieda (Elf). Yoli grows up in the shadow of the talented Elf, who is a famous pianist and an amazing free spirit. Yoli adores her from a young age, as Elf is the only one she knows who has the will and strength to fight against their religious Mennonite upbringing.

      As adults, it seems like Elf has it all together - a loving partner, a successful career as a famous pianist, while Yoli is struggling - she's divorced (she's working on number two) and working to stay afloat as an author and raise her two kids.

      However, underneath, we learn Elf has a great sadness, as the book covers her suicide attempts, including one as she is about to embark on a concert tour. Yoli rushes to her sister's side, but struggles to help her.

      Overall, as I stated, the book is lovely, despite its sad subject matter (my heart hurts that apparently much of this is autobiographical for Toews). Having lost a loved one to suicide, reading a lot of this was very hard, indeed. I was very drawn to Yoli - she is a well-written character and you find yourself rooting for her, as she deals with her sister, her mother, and her crazy life. Even fragile Elf is beautiful. The girls' mother is quite a character; I loved her deeply. She was a trip.

      I had to power through this one - sometimes all the bad things happening were overwhelming. The strength of character pulled me through it. I found myself a little frustrated at times ("why am I reading this?!"), but it truly is lovely, and if you've dealt with mental illness in any way (either yourself or with someone you love), while it will hurt, it's also a worthwhile read.
    • 3/5
      I'm purposely being vague however, this review may contain what some would consider SPOILERS. There are a lot of reviews of this book so I won't say too much and just narrow in on my main points. I enjoyed the read, Toews is an excellent writer and her characters are always wonderful. I think I'll always enjoy any book she writes. This family, with all its extended aunts and cousins, etc, is so strong when it comes together to be a family to endure the sorrows together and I loved them as an example of family. What the (western) world has so much grown away from and lost. I loved Lottie and Yoli, such women full of fortitude, even though Yoli would have us believe she was full of weakness. Elf, the sister described as not wanting to live, I didn't like. We never got inside her head and I understand the point of that. But we were also not told what her problem was, psychiatrically, what was her diagnosis. She refused meds and I became frustrated with the author for not, at least, giving us the information the family would have. Thus, the reader guesses what is wrong with her and I really did not like her at all when she forces her sister, who is against it, to realistically investigate euthanasia on her behalf. The first death was a beautiful one and showed how a well-lived life can end and how those left behind gather strength from it. In the end, I didn't find the book sad at all. I'm glad the book ended the way it did.
    • 5/5
      Bloody hell, this is such an achingly sad book. The novel is narrated by Yoli, a writer, whose sister Elf is in hospital following an attempt to kill herself. It's a bleak, funny, moving and heart-wrenching story of love, despair and futility - the whole plot is basically a tug of war between Elf and her family, whose love doesn't seem to be enough to keep her alive. It sounds unremittingly bleak, and it's definitely downbeat, but the voice of Yoli snaps you out of the sadness with wit and sarcasm and you find yourself laughing in the midst of a dreadfully sad story. Toews is a fantastic writer, and this is her most moving book.
    • 5/5
      I really loved this book. The relationship between Elf and Yoli is just so tender and rich and real. Somehow, the author infuses a lightness and humor into such a sad and tragic story. It felt very human and raw. The writing itself is beautiful--very lyrical. I'm going to have to read more by Miriam Toews.
    • 4/5
      "Where does the violence go, if not directly back into our blood and bones?" I'm not sure what to write about this book. It's equally ironic, sad and humorous. I listened to the audible version of this book, and could really feel the conversational style of the writing. My only regret is the timing.I knew this was going to be a sad story. I had read this was semi-autobiographical, and touched on themes about Toews's religious upbringing as a Mennonite, as well as the tragic relationships she had with both her father and sister. I planned this read during a time when I was especially upbeat and jovial.Then things changed overnight. I lost one grandmother a month ago, and spent this past week in the hospital waiting for news about my beloved maternal grandmother. I couldn't bring myself to finish the last two hours of the book until today, after my grandmother was sent home under orders from hospice. After her long battle with ALS, something as "puny" as a bedsore will have the last word. It's ironic, just like this book.Although mental illness and its "violence" torture the sufferer, it's effects are always far-reaching. Grief, guilt, sorrow, anxiety, anger and depression are all natural things humans experience when they lose a loved one. What compels a person to take their life? Why are some individuals so stubbornly optimistic despite crappy hands they're dealt in life, while others have the world and are gifted beyond compare, and yet suffer tremendously with each renewed day of life? This is a wonderfully personal novel, and I'm glad Toews deemed us a worthy audience."Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen." - D. H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley's Lover
    • 4/5
      Yolandi (Yoli) is a separated forty-something mother of two teenagers who writes rodeo-themed books. Elfrieda (Elf), her sister, is a talented concert pianist with a loving husband and no children. Elf has been in and out of mental facilities due to multiple attempts at suicide. Yoli and Elf are part of a lapsed Mennonite family from rural Canada, now living in Winnipeg and Toronto. Their father died by suicide years ago. Their mother tries to help everyone as best she can. Elf is taken to task by the staff for “not cooperating.” Yoli is repeatedly begging the medical professionals to help her sister.

      Yoli is the narrator and we get to know her well. She does not want her sister to die and is torn about enabling her in any way. If Elf is going to kill herself anyway, would it be better to help her die with dignity? She asks herself many questions along these lines.

      This sad story is based on the author’s family. It contains subtle humor that helps it not feel overwhelmingly depressing. The author delicately explores suicide, mental health treatment, shame, guilt, and right to die issues. It is a novel about love and pain. It is not for anyone dealing with depression.
    • 5/5
      Such highs and lows! So heartbreaking, so hilarious. Quite the balancing act. But I'm very glad that Toews accomplishes humor so well here, otherwise this book might have broken me (and probably many other readers!) I'm doing that thing that I usually do if a book is at ALL true to a writer's life -- and Yoli here, if she is the fictional stand-in of Miriam Toews - ah, what a great character, so I'm immediately more a fan of Toews if she is at all like the screwup/badass Yoli. But every character is a great one in this book. Can sisters really be this amazing to one another? To even be able to write this book if it is close to your own life, and do it so well, is an accomplishment. It's also interesting that Toews' new book 'Fight Night' has a character named Swiv which is a nickname of Yoli... wish I had a copy now to read and see the connection. I will be reading more from Toews and I'm glad I finally had a visit with this one.
    • 5/5
      This is a beautifully written story of a family desperate to save the life of a suicidal loved one. I usually dislike reading dialogue without quotation marks, but Toews has a unique style that makes things clear. She presents a realistic mix of the sadness, anger and humor that make up grief. I read this on my nook app and will probably buy a hard copy to read again.
    • 4/5
      All my Puny Sorrows. Miriam Toews. 2015. Gosh, who would think that a novelk on suicide could be so enjoyable? I got this book because my favorite, noir Irish writer, Ken Bruen said, it was “the best” book on suicide he’d ever read. Toews is like Bruen in that she has you laughing at one sentence and crying at the next one. It is a poignant picture of Elf, a brilliant, beautiful pianist who wants to die and Yoli, her sister who loves her so much she is unwillingly considering how she can help her. In the first person narration, Joli describes the agony of the family trying to keep Elf alive and the agony they suffer after her death. I am not sure this book would provide any comfort to anyone who has experienced the tragedy of suicide. But I will read more of Toews.
    • 5/5
      Can you love someone so much you would do the ultimate deed to release her from her sorrow even if it breaks your heart? This is the anguish that faces Yolandi. Her older sister is her friend, her confidante and her hero. They are so close they can read each other's eyes. Elfrieda has everything - creativity, talent, beauty, and, most of all, courage to escape their small Canadian Mennonite village. How can Yoli refuse do what Elf asks of her? Written beautifully with both sadness and humor, and partly inspired by events in her own life, Toews has deservedly won the 2014 Scotia Giller Prize for this wonderful novel.
    • 3/5
      All My Puny Sorrows is kind of like Me Before You, with intractable depression instead of quadriplegia, and a lot more literary references. Brillant, beautiful Elfrieda "Elf" von Riesen has it all; she's a successful concert pianist with a loving husband and devoted family, but she is also afflicted by a persistent desire to die. Her mother, husband, and sister repeatedly save her life and and try to inspire her with the will to live, but their efforts are all for naught. Much philosophizing and many flashbacks to anecdotes from the past ensue.

      I felt impatient with Elf. She's something of a cipher and the nature of her depression is not well explained, so it is hard for the reader to understand where she's coming from.

      I had high hopes for this book, but came away somewhat disappointed.
    • 5/5
      Elfrieda (Elf) is a world-renowned pianist, beautiful, wealthy, in a happy marriage – and she wants to die. Her younger sister Yolandi (Yoli) who tells this story is broke, divorced and struggling as a single mother, and she desperately wants to save her sister from committing suicide, while she tries to keep her own life together.

      This book, shortlisted for Canada’s prestigious Giller Prize in 2014, looks at a serious subject in a compassionate & profound way – and along the way provides some humour from Yoli.

      An outstanding effort. One of those books that sneaks up on you.

      5 stars
    • 5/5
      I would say that this book undid me, but I think it put me together for the first time. It hit very, very close to home. It made me feel vulnerable, but it didn't make me sad. I think reading this book built something up in me that I didn't know needed to be assembled. I'm absolutely floored by Toews brilliance and incredibly grateful for this beautiful book.
    • 4/5
      A very sad but not depressing book about how a sister and her mother live with and through the deaths of family members. An honest look -- without apology, explanation, or excuse -- at suicide. There are so many good truisms in the book, a healthy dose of literary quotations and poetry, and of course the raw dialogue style of Miriam Toews that is unconventional but so logical, nevertheless. Our lives might be normal or screwed up or utterly painful: how do you do it?
    • 4/5
      A strong novel about a tough subject to write about, the desire to end one’s life. There is a certain heaviness to the book as the narrator grapples with her sister’s depression, and yet, I found it to be more about life and relationships than it was about darkness, so don’t let the subject put you off too much. Toews mixes in the right levels of humor and touching moments, but most of all, she tells the story with honesty and authenticity, and doesn’t resort to melodrama. I loved how her novel was intelligent and yet down to earth. The family has plenty of flaws, made poor decisions, and survived being a part of a conservative Mennonite community, but they are well-read and highly cultured. The book’s title comes from a Coleridge poem, ‘To a Friend’, and there are many other poetic references: Dorothy Parker (“What fresh hell is this?”), Madame de Staël (“beyond all doubt, if you are not as happy as it is possible to be, you are more beloved than anyone who has ever lived”), and Philip Larkin (“What are days for?”), among many others.

      There are several frank passages on ways of committing suicide, from the drastic (in America, jumping in front of a train), to buying medications normally used to put pets to sleep (in Mexico, Nembutal preceded by an anti-emetic such as Dramamine), to being legally put to sleep (in Switzerland, where euthanasia is legal for non-citizens who’ve simply grown weary of living). And, it’s telling that it’s the sister who is beautiful, talented, smart, and has love around her in life that paradoxically wants to end it, because she’s seen its absurdity and is wrought with inner angst.

      The women characters in the novel are strong, such as the feisty old mom and aunt, and the bond between the sisters is special and heartwarming. The narrator recalls one time after having her heart broken, her sister sending her a quote from Paul Valery, one word per letter, so that it takes months to decode “Breath, dreams, silence, invisible calm…you will triumph.” One does wonder, are there actually people who do this? … but it’s so incredibly sweet and literary you have to smile. The book really hits its stride in Chapter 5, mixing humor, relationships, and memories in a hospital visit between the two. Also fantastic is Chapter 8, which has some wonderful letters which are intelligent, poignant, and offbeat, essentially microcosms of the book as a whole. I don’t want to spoil anything, but will just say that Toews is skillful in navigating these waters, and I love how she played this one out.

      Quotes:
      On beauty:
      “Her smile is an event.”

      On depression:
      “Did Elf have a terminal illness? Was she cursed genetically from day one to want to die? Was every seemingly happy moment from her past, every smile, every song, every heartfelt hug and laugh and exuberant fist-pump and triumph, just a temporary detour from her innate longing for release and oblivion?”

      On love:
      “Dan wanted me to stay. I wanted Elf to stay. Everyone in the whole world was fighting with somebody to stay. When Richard Bach wrote ‘If you love someone, set them free’ he can’t have been directing his advice at human beings.”

      On time and meaninglessness:
      “I tell her all right, I’ll leave but I’ll be back tomorrow. She says isn’t it funny how every second, every minute, every day, month, year, is accounted for, capable of being named – when time, or life, is so unwieldy, so intangible and slippery? This makes her feel compassion toward the people who invented the concept of ‘telling time.’ How hopeful, she says. How beautifully futile. How perfectly human.”

      Lastly, these bits of humor:
      “He had come to Winnipeg to write a libretto. But who hasn’t? It’s a dark and fecund corner of the world, this confluence of muddy waters, one that begs the question of hey, how do we set words to life’s tragic score?”

      “She started telling stories about me when I was a kid … that I was the toughest girl in town, and that nobody made her laugh harder and that all her piano performances, really, were inspired by my life, by the wild, free, rhythm of my life, combined with its delicacy, its defiance (which I knew was shorthand for being messed up but unable to admit it), or something like that. That she tried to play her piano the way I lived my life: freely, joyfully, honestly (shorthand for: like a cheerful halfwit with no social skills).”

      “I remember the sex talk she gave me when I was twelve or thirteen. She asked me if I knew what a hard-on was and I said yes and she said great! That was it, the extent of it, my terse navigational guide to the biggest minefield confronting humankind.”

      “He put his arm around her and said blessings on you, girl, and she told him she was sorry that he had to visit her here. He said no. We don’t apologize for being sick, for being human, for being weary (Uncle Frank has obviously never been a woman.)”
    • 5/5
      At the behest of my well-intentioned mom, the standard issue piano lessons of your average middle-class child crept into once-weekly residency during several years of my childhood. I was a proper failure. I'd take up my seat next to the note-murmuring Mr. Poe and repeatedly pound out "Oom Pa Pa" accompanied by the intermittent SWACK of his favored wooden ruler meeting errant knuckles while my brain was, inconveniently, elsewhere. Often pondering the pros and cons of the stolid Mr. Poe morphing into a raven. I was always more notes-in-the-margins than music notes; my piano lessons (as well as the redundant pleas to switch to guitar lessons because, somehow, THAT would be different and marvelous and oh-so-me) instilling a vast appreciation for those that were musically skilled without, however, bestowing any of that skill upon yours truly.

      We all connect differently to the world around us. I could sit down at the nearest piano and chop out a decent "Twinkle Twinkle" but it's the reader in me that is my looking glass into the freedom some feel when keys move beneath flowing fingers. It's the same kind of freedom I feel when something in an author's voice connects with something inside of me and brings it forth, blooming, bursting, breathing.

      Toews' All My Puny Sorrows brings forth for me. She richly tells a story of a battle to hold on and to let go. Leavening the sharpness of the reality of loss, depression, mental illness, suicide, grief, and anger with tenderness, respect, empathy, and humor. As we can only do when we've come up against the former and survived it's blows. I think this is why so many have responded to Sorrows; it carries the taste of real experience, real voice. This, being balanced with talent and insightful reference, makes Toews one of my favorite new-to-me authors of this year.

      All My Puny Sorrows was a sad, beautiful, encouraging, devastating book to read. It was hard to read and yet even harder to put down. I found so much depth and wisdom in Toews' writing. Wisdom for those who have held on with fierce resolve to life and loved ones; for those who have felt what-if and what-should-I-do tremble on their tongue and echo echo echo in their brains and souls; for those who have experienced both the best and worst of the medical community, the caustic singe of guilt the burnt-out can propagate amidst their patients that are dealing with mental/emotional illness and the lightheaded joy those walking blessings that appear in grey or tan hospital corridors when you least expect them and when you most need them to. Wisdom for those who don't know how to take the next step or write the next word.
    • 4/5
      "Our house was taken away on the back of a truck one afternoon late in the summer of 1979."

      This opening sentence tells you exactly what to expect from the rest of the novel. Eccentric characters and weird off-kilter events fill almost every page. (A man walks past the house naked from the waist down. Their mother goes out to give him some sweat pants. He winds them round his neck like a scarf and walks on. A doctor's waiting room is filled with people who all have patches on their left eye. These are just two examples.)

      It's the I story of two sisters, Elf and Yoli, brought up in a Canadian small town Mennonite community by parents who break most of the strict Puritan religious rules. For most of the book, Yoli debates whether she should prevent her suicidal sister from killing herself or take her off to Switzerland and help her to end her life peacefully. Much of it takes place in hospitals as Elf recovers from her latest suicide attempt. Plus she's by no means the only member of their extensive family to have a history of suicide attempts.

      Summed up like this, I dare say it doesn't sound very enticing and yet, for a novel full of suicide and death, it is strangely life enhancing, not least because of the humour provided by that constraint stream of eccentricities and some lively, intelligent and funny dialogue. I've never been to Winnepeg or Toronto but Miriam Toews makes both cities sound fascinatingly exotic.
    • 4/5
      "When I listened to her play I felt I should not be there in the same room with her. There were hundreds of people but nobody left. It was a private pain. By private I mean to say unknowable. Only the music knew and it held secrets so that her playing was a puzzle, a whisper, and people afterwards stood in the bar and drank and said nothing because they were complicit. There were no words.” (Ch 4)Elf and Yoli Von Reisen are smart, loving sisters, and polar opposites. Elf is a world-renowned pianist, glamourous, wealthy, adored, happily married: she wants only to die. Yoli is a mess, divorced, broke, looking for love in the wrong places – and desperately trying to keep her sister alive. The novel opens in the white-hot pitch of a medical emergency room right after Elf has attempted suicide, not for the first time. Yoli, by turns wickedly funny and heartbreakingly real is, of course, by her sister’s side. If it’s what Elf wants, she’ll do what she can to nurse her back to health in time for her world tour, several weeks out. But Elf’s request will shock her: the assistance she requests of Yoli has nothing to do with her upcoming tour. And so the younger sister is faced with a terrifying decision.Toews is a talented writer, no question. I was taken with both storyline and subject matter immediately, and settled in for what I expected to be a 4.5 or 5* read. But here’s my trouble: the entire novel, but for the final 50 or so pages, is written at such a fevered pitch that it became too much. When at last Elf has succeeded, and Yoli and their mother have settled down to the business of getting on with life, I could breathe again and enjoy – but by then, the story was over. Sadly, this is not one I will recommend, but others have thoroughly enjoyed it.“I tried to apologize, to ease the tension. I didn’t know what to say. I quoted Goethe … “suicide is an event of human nature which, whatever may be said and done with respect to it, demands the sympathy of every man, and in every epoch must be discussed anew” … (Ch 18)_____________Hilarious Quote: (I'm still chuckling about this, even after I’ve closed the novel)The setting of here is the same small Manitoba Mennonite community of which Toews wrote in A Complicated Kindenss. The church elders, attempting to control every aspect of its citizens’ lives, occasionally provide comic relief, as when a troubling rumour gets out that Elf might want to attend university, leading to a “raid” on the family home by the bishop:“He showed up on a Saturday in a convoy with his usual posse of elders, each in his own black, hard-topped car (they never carpool because it's not as effective in creating terror when thirteen or fourteen similarly dressed men tumble out of one car) and my father and I watched from the window as they parked in front of our house and got out of their cars and walked slowly towards us, one behind the other, like a tired conga line.” (Ch 1)
    • 4/5
      Sisters have a strange bond. They fight like cats and dogs but they love each other right down to the marrow of their beings. They can frustrate each other, annoy each other, even dislike each other at times, but they are still connected in inexplicable ways. Often they find their roles in the family and they hew to those roles forever after. In Miriam Toews' latest novel, All My Puny Sorrows, there are two sisters caught in their self-defined roles as one of them actively seeks to leave this world and the other struggles to keep her sister in it.

      Elfrieda (Elf) is a world-renowned concert pianist. She is happily married to a wonderful, thoughtful, and loving man. She's successful beyond all imagining. And yet she is deeply depressed, attempting suicide regularly. Yolandi (Yoli) appears to be the diametric opposite of her older sister. Given half a chance, she consistently bollockses up her life and needs to be bailed out by her sister. Despite her chronic money problems, the difficulties of single parenting, and multiple failed relationships behind her, she is generally pretty happy. Or she would be if her beloved sister wasn't so determined to kill herself. Not only does Elf want to die but she wants Yoli to help her, concocting schemes for them to go overseas together where Elf can get enough of certain drugs to finally succeed in dying. What does Yoli owe Elf though? Does she owe it to her sister to help her or does she owe it to her to try and keep her safe? Yoli wants to be the loyal, unquestioning, and adoring sister she's always been but this leaves her torn about the right thing to do.

      Elf is not the first in her family to contemplate suicide. In fact, Elf and Yoli's father committed suicide himself. His quiet beliefs in writing and reading put him at constant odds with their Mennonite community, as does his unwavering support for Elf in her forbidden love of piano, poetry, and her unconventional personality. This longstanding history of the two sisters, as well as past persecutions in Russia, weaves in throughout the more present narrative where Elf is in a psychiatric hospital instead of preparing for her upcoming concert tour. The story is entirely from Yoli's first person perspective as the unsuccessful sister and Elf is only envisioned through her eyes. This persepctive makes it that much more shocking for the reader when Elf admits to Yoli that she has spent a lifetime being the responsible one in order to give Yoli the space and freedom to screw-up. And because we see Elf's despair through the lens of Yoli, there seems to be no definable reason for her crippling depression. Yoli doesn't understand quite the ways in which performing both saves and drains Elf, nor the way the pressure to fulfill her familial role overwhelms her. Instead she is left to wonder whether her sister has the right to die if she is seemingly healthy and only suffering mentally. Is this a mental illness deep within her bones that plagues Elf and if so can she be judged sane in her desire to die?

      The narration feels akin to but not exactly stream of consciousness and is very much one sided. There is little action involved; the story relies almost entirely on character development to keep the reader turning pages. Elf as a character is sneaky and determined, non-compliant with her doctors' orders, only wanting to be loosed from the hospital in order to accomplish her ultimate goal. Yoli's character is conflicted and at least somewhat sympathetic as she weighs her own needs and wants as versus her sister's. The story is roughly based on Toews' own family situation and there is a poignancy about it and a truthfulness to both the grief of living in fear for a depressed loved one and the scary inability to truly save someone who has no interest in being saved. As a novel centered on suicide and the desire to die, there is a lot of bleakness and depression, of course, but there's also humor strewn throughout the story that leavens the certain despair, sadness, and sorrow at moments when it threatens to overwhelm the reader. The writing is serious, intimate, and meticulously chosen; it's very well-written. The story as a whole though is somewhat ponderous and the pacing is slow and deliberate. As a look at the toll depression takes on not only the sufferer but those who love her, this is masterful but as an engaging story, it just doesn't quite reach the same level.
    • 5/5
      I am ashamed to admit that in the past, I haven't felt that much sympathy for people who attempt suicide. I had always thought that it was a selfish and narcissistic act, causing irreparable pain to everyone around them. But, I don't know anyone who has and suicide hasn't been an event (thankfully) that has impacted my life. Author Miram Toews, on the other hand, is all too familiar with suicide. Her father committed suicide and then 12 years later, her sister also killed herself -- both of them died by throwing themselves in front of a train. All My Puny Sorrows is the semi-autobiographical story of 2 sisters -- Elfrieda, a world class pianist and Yoli, a not very well known children's author. Elfrieda is successful, beautiful, married to a wonderful husband, but she wants to die. Yoli, on the other hand, is struggling on many fronts. She has had 2 failed marriages, ekes out a living writing children's books about girls who compete in horse barrel racing, and continues to fall for the wrong kind of guy. But where her life is really falling apart is that her sister has attempted suicide multiple times.

      Although the subject of this novel sounds abysmally depressing, Toews throws in humor to this story. And it's not sick, dark humor, but an interesting way of looking at how ridiculous our lives sometimes turn out. I found myself laughing aloud and then crying at other parts. I can't express how much this book touched me. It definitely made me look at my life differently and the lives of people around me. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      excellently written. wonderful depiction of both family love, psychiatric problems, and real despair.
    • 4/5
      A devastating rumination on choosing to live, choosing to die, and who exactly owns these choices. Not an easy read but a necessary one.
    • 4/5
      The dialogue in this novel is outstanding.To make suicide at all humorous must be very difficult but Miriam Toews does it. Her characters, Elf and Yoli, sisters, are so well developed and so interesting. I love their crazy mother and Yoli's friend Julie. The only reason I did not give a higher star is I didn't like how it ended. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Not at all. I don't get it.
    • 5/5
      Miriam Toews’ extraordinary novel All My Puny Sorrows is an examination of the tragedy inherent in the condition of being human and alive, possibly one of the most brutally honest we’re likely to encounter. This is a novel primarily of two sisters. Yolandi, the narrator, is an author with several moderately successful young-adult novels to her credit and Elfrieda is a concert pianist with a global reputation and a devoted fan base. Yolandi is more or less contented with where she is in life, if she forgets for a moment that she has given birth to two children by two different men, neither of whom is married to her, that she’s broke, and that she’s bored with the YA novel series and carries the manuscript of her unfinished literary novel around with her in a plastic bag. Elfrieda, intensely intellectual, childless and married to doting and long-suffering Nic, has built a riotously successful concert career. She can write her own ticket whenever she wants by going on tour because everywhere she goes her concerts sell out. The difference is that Elfrieda is desperately unhappy and wants to die. Indeed, desperation is at the crux of the novel: the action revolves around Yolandi’s desperate efforts to keep her sister alive and Elfrieda’s equally desperate efforts to slough off a life that has become a torment. Elfrieda’s latest suicide attempt has taken place in the weeks leading up to another concert tour. Yolandi, her mother and Nic struggle to bring Elfrieda through this latest crisis, hopefully in a way that won’t jeopardize the tour. But as the story progresses it becomes clear that the tour will not happen. Central to the novel is a loving, supportive and emotionally intimate relationship between two siblings. At a certain point Yolandi realizes that she will never convince her sister that life is preferable to death, and with this realization finds herself facing a crisis of conscience. The brilliance of Miriam Toews is her ability to take a situation fraught with grief and despair and unbearable sadness and leaven it with humour. This is a family that has suffered a similar loss in the past (the girls’ father killed himself) and as Yolandi struggles to decide on a course of action and we approach what seems an inevitable outcome, Yolandi's behaviour grows erratic and the prose develops a frantic demented momentum that makes it a joy to read. Most of us have been touched in some manner by suicide. It’s impossible to not feel strongly about it. The decision to end a life, even (especially?) your own, should never be easy or simple. All My Puny Sorrows teaches that only by accepting the tragedy of life for what it is will we triumph and move forward.
    • 5/5
      I really liked this book! It was like having a long and wonderful visit with a very good friend and you could both say whatever you wanted! I wanted to read it with a pencil to put a star beside passages that were perfect. Passages that gave so much meaning and were expressed so well, pearls! It is a sad book as it is about grief and acceptance and relationships, and caring. It's about family. It is full of strong vulnerable emotions. There is so much humour and cleverness in the book and the characters jump out fully formed. The undercurrent of the book is the Mennonite community and its pull, with it's long tough history and role expectations. There was such love and warmth in this book.

      some quotes
      " They were apoplectically supsicious of higher learning-especially for girls. Public enemy number one for these men was a girl with a book." p 12

      " The sons inherit the wealth and pass it on to their sons and to their sons and the daughters get sweet fuck all....But whatever we descendants of the Girl Line may not have wealth and proper windows in our drafty homes, but at least we have rage and will build empires with that, gentlemen." p. 230

      "The brain is built to forget things as we continue to live, that memories are meant to fade and disintegrate, ......that the pain of letting go of grief is just as painful or even more painful than the grief itself. p. 314.

      Words won't feed the Admiral's cat!" p. 317
    • 5/5
      I always fall hard for the novels Miriam Toews writes and the characters she creates. A best selling author in Canada, most of her books involve individualistically inclined or exiled Mennonites balancing their traditional upbringing with the modern world in distinctive stories of personal struggle and family connection. The details about Mennonite culture and its fringes give the stories added interest and a strong sense of place, but it’s the characters that really set her novels apart.

      In All My Puny Sorrows one sister has it all. Elfrieda Von Riese has always been eccentric, passionate, talented and intense--a dances to her own drummer Mennonite--and now as an adult she’s a wealthy, beloved, beautiful, world acclaimed pianist in a wonderfully loving marriage, but in spite of all that goodness Elf is determined to kill herself, somehow never having developed a tolerance for living in the world. Her sister Yolandi, in contrast, is a twice divorced now single mother, drifting in and out of relationships and perennially broke, who desperately wants to keep Elf alive. “She wanted to die and I wanted her to live and we were enemies who loved each other.”

      It’s not a plotline that would normally attract me, and the story is more character than plot anyway, but Toews gives her characters such captivating, heart-piercing voices that I sank deep and only reluctantly put down this thoughtfully nuanced, non-condescending, family celebrating book. The title comes from a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
    • 4/5
      Touching story of two sisters and their family and the effect of severe depression on each of them. There are some very humorous moments which help lighten the depressing subject matter. I cared about these characters and what would happen to each of them. The book made me appreciate the choices we make each day to embrace life or to reject it. Recommend!
    • 3/5
      A hard subject, well told, the tone just struck me as a bit... off.
    • 5/5
      This book is brilliant, in my opinion. It has deeply, deeply affected me. Actually, the only people I can think of who wouldn't love this work would be some Mennonites or those who can't cope with reading words such as f*** and c****. Miriam Toews must be a truly remarkable woman to have survived a situation such as the one she describes in this book.
    • 2/5
      It is impossible to read this novel without an awareness of certain events in author Miriam Toews’ life badgering you with every line, with every page you turn. Some years ago Toews’ father committed suicide. Some years after that her sister followed suit. It is a harrowing reality that bombards every moment of this fictional account of the repeated, and eventually successful, suicide attempts of a brilliant pianist and her sister’s efforts to thwart this and/or contemplate the possibility of acceding to her sister’s plea and helping her. Sometimes writers are urged to write about what they know. Sometimes they should think twice.

      Of course the writing here is brilliant. It effervesces. Toews’ talent tends toward the rapid fire one liner, which here fires off without pause, plunging breathlessly onward, faster and faster, through one unmitigated disaster to the next, hurtling headlong into…what? Exactly. We begin in the feverish white heat of the emergency ward and for the next 250 pages we remain at that extreme state of anxiety. It begins to feel and read as though the non-suicidal sister is losing her mind. And rightly so. And thus, it is only in the denouement, which lasts a further 60 pages, that All My Puny Sorrows begins to read like a novel.

      I’m certain that Toews found great relief in writing this novel (she says as much in interviews about it). As such it serves its purpose as a kind of grief therapy. For the author. But what does the reader gain from this? Not, I think, what Toews has gained, for few if any of us will have suffered the kinds of immediate loss that she has had to face. Instead, we are offered the chance to witness her grief therapy. Sort of. But that isn’t itself therapeutic for us. And it doesn’t make for a satisfying novel either. Might it perhaps, then, at least have some value as a spur to debate over the possible legalization of assisted suicide? I fear that is precisely how the book has been embraced in the literary community, and it is a mistake. Toews’ private grief made public is not a good grounding for a discussion on the rationality of suicide.

      For my part, I think Toews is a wonderful writer. She has an immense talent. It is sad that her life is filled with almost Greek-like tragedy. Suitable material for weeping and the gnashing of teeth. Which would be a perfectly reasonable response. However, the principal characters in Greek tragedies don’t overcome their tragedies by creating art. Rather, Sophocles comes along decades later and enlightens and informs us of their tragic plight. Sadly, not recommended.