Ever since bloglily wrote about children having ‘books thrust at them like brocoli’, I can’t get the books/food connection out of my head. For me, some books are a three course meal, heavy, filling and extremely satisfying (Middlemarch, perhaps); others are like starters, light, refreshing but leaving you hungry for more (anything by Marian Keyes); while some are like whole boxes of chocolates, forbidden, fascinating, but ultimately sickening (A Million Little Pieces or We Need To Talk About Kevin).
The book I’ve just finished reading was like finding a famous chef in my kitchen, whipping up a meal that surprised me and delighted my taste buds. I found it in my local bookshop, which, with its one shelf with English fiction, is not known for stocking great literature. However, on my last visit there sat Miriam Towes’ A Complicated Kindness, a book that had evaded my radar completely. I had never heard of it or her, so I had to have it.
The protagonist, Nomi Nickel, is a teenager in a Mennonite town where nothing happens apart from a lot of church-going, finger-pointing and excommunication. Life is excruciatingly dull, especially since her dream is to live in New York and hang out with Lou Reed. Noni’s uncle Hans (“The Mouth”) leads the Mennonites and has no problem excommunicating (“shunning”) both his sister, Noni’s mother, and her daughter, Noni’s older sister. They both leave, no-one knows where, and Noni and her father Ray are left with their grief and the society that has shunned half their family.
Ray deals with his sorrow by refusing to take off his suit, going for all-night drives, sitting in his garden chair for hours on end and saying ‘well’, his “trademark answer to life’s many questions”. Noni responds by having a delicately charted breakdown. She questions their religion (saying the Mennonites are “the most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if you’re a teenager”), and then does some of the usual teenage stuff – starts to act up in school, gets a boyfriend, has sex, smokes pot – which in a Mennonite town can get you shunned.
This eventually happens, but not before pages of beautiful, wry and accomplished writing. Toews’ style is subtle; she is a past master of showing not telling, and her evocation of Nomi’s deadpan humour is brilliant. It’s the voice of an intelligent, sad, funny and confused person trying to make out her world.
Three days later, I can’t get Nomi’s voice out of my head. Here are some things she says:
“Half of our family, the better-looking half, is missing.”
“My dad was not big on overt symbols of hope. His famous line was: Let’s not call it a celebration.”
“I still believe that one day we’ll all be together, the four of us, in New York City. Lou Reed could live with us too … We’d be his roadies. People would say hey, is that Lou Reed and his Mennonite family of roadies?”
As soul food, this book is delicious. It surprises, it delights, is whimsical and above all, funny. Read it.
Charlotte's Web 
July 16, 2006 at 4:04 am
I’m glad to have found someone who loves Toews’s book as much as I do. I was beginning to feel discouraged because I kept recommending it to people, and kept getting lukewarm responses. Someone had thought that the book was so hopeless, that Nomi was still trapped in the end. But, like you, I couldn’t get her voice out of my head. I think that the entire book shows her as being subversive, that this teenager would narrate the oppressive aspects of her life and community with such honesty and humour. You should read _A Boy of Good Breeding_, also by Toews.
July 16, 2006 at 4:32 am
I did find the ending jarring – I did so want her to escape. But we don’t read to always be comforted, and I like books that surprise me, all the way to the end.
I’m going to hunt down A Boy of Good Breeding! And I’m adding Toews to my list of great Canadian writers: Atwood, LM Montgomery, Carol Shields are amongst my favourite writers.
August 12, 2006 at 2:13 am
I think this is a great book. Author Towes demonstrates just how close to real dementia all adolescets are. Its scarey.
January 18, 2007 at 3:32 pm
I loved this novel. It was so strange and beautifully done, that I still remember it, even after reading it a couple of years ago.
February 22, 2007 at 7:52 pm
As a Canadian, and an avid fan of Can-lit., as they call it in grade 12 English class, I’m happy to see that Toews has made it onto the international scene! She won the “Canada Reads 2006” competition with A Complicated Kindness, and my mom sent it to me, here in Germany, as a Christmas present this past year.
You mention Atwood, Montgomery and Shields as other favourite Canadian authors. They are wonderful, aren’t they?! I was wondering if you have ever read any Timothy Findley, Robertson Davies or Michael Ondaatje? I could recommend – and lend – any number of their books to you, should you be interested.
On the poetry scene, there are also two more authors I’d like to mention: Ann Michaels and Gwendolyn MacEwen. Your beautiful entry “I am from” reminded me of some of her poetry.