What we can offer are small, ordinary gifts. We’re not in charge of other people’s choices. But to survive trauma and grief without becoming bitter, we have to recognize that we’re not that important. We may wish to pour our minds into solutions and fix what’s broken, especially on a personal level, especially in families, and that’s a good impulse, I’m not saying it’s not. That means that life is not about problem-solving, even though we may wish it to be so. That doesn’t mean you don’t try to save someone. Maybe if you’ve lost a husband and a daughter to suicide, you understand profoundly how little your love can cure or save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. The mother tells her daughter near the end of the book that letting go of a grief is more painful than holding onto it, but it’s what she hopes her daughter will be able to do. We raise our kids up with love and care, and we offer love and care pretty much forever, as long as we’re living, but that’s all we can do. And the lives of others do not belong to us, even when we’re mothers. And that seems to be part of the book’s message (though it’s not a “message” book): that we are responsible for our own lives, that we can only carry the weight of responsibility for the things that are ours to change. But even her love cannot anchor her daughters. Her depth of soul and lightness of spirit anchors the narrative. The mother of these two sisters, who has also lost her husband to suicide, is the most brilliantly drawn loved and loving independent fearless woman I can remember reading in a book, ever. People don’t behave like you want them to. It is more raw and immediate, less polished, a straight throughway from beginning to end of almost (seemingly) unmediated experience. But this novel feels different to me, too.
As in all of Miriam Toews’ novels, the bit characters are as vividly drawn and unique as everyone else, and humour hums silvery through the anguish and grief. After finishing a heartbreaking resonant emotionally complex narrative don’t you just want to gather some friends immediately and talk about it?ĪLL MY PUNY SORROWS is a semi-autobiographical novel about the relationship between sisters, one exquisitely talented and suicidal, and the other a bit of a mess and desperate to save her sister’s life. This is the kind of book for which book clubs were invented - a lot of book clubs are about friends getting together and drinking wine and the book is the excuse, I get that, but nevertheless there’s a genuine need underlying the concept of the book club. Last night, up far too late, I finished Miriam Toews’ ALL MY PUNY SORROWS. I keep a record of the books I’m reading here (which is to say, there), but occasionally I feel the urge to write about a book I’ve read here (which is to say, here).
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