Heralded as one of her country’s foremost writers, Toews is, among Canadians, “ more famous than many hockey players.” She is also a “secular Mennonite” occasionally her characters will speak a language called Plautdietsch. They hold one another like “sick Patients in Nurse’s arms.” Her work is tragic, playful, and ultimately, as many have attested, life-affirming. Toews’ characters relate to one another all their sorrows both puny and not-so-puny. That shrink asham’d from even Friendship’s eye.

To her I pour’d forth all my puny sorrows As a type of social failure.” The title alone - All My Puny Sorrows - gives a taste of the self-aware comedy to come but it is taken from a beautiful, earnest Coleridge poem:

“I had moved away,” says the narrator of AMPS, “…and had two kids with two different guys…as a type of social experiment. Yet even as they grapple with the heaviest themes, Toews’ books are also some of the most genuinely funny that I have encountered - not forced or satirical, just good, original humor - because, in her own words, “that is what life is like - brutal, comic, everything happening at the wrong moment.” Her characters are quirky, idiosyncratic, a mother constantly reading whodunits, a mail carrier with a rebellious spirit. Her newest book, Women Talking, is a response to the real-life story of mass sexual assault in a remote Mennonite colony its cover art (see below) is both elegant and ominous, evoking, at least from our current cultural imagination, The Handmaid’s Tale. Mongrel Media, Mulmur Feed Co.Miriam Toews (pronounced “taves”) first came to my attention in 2015 with All My Puny Sorrows, a moving novelization of her sister’s suicide this intelligent, propulsive work tested the bounds of empathy and family loyalty. Mongrel Media, Mulmur Feed Co., Sugar Shack Productions, Carousel Pictures, Telefilm Canada, Crave Films, CBC Films, Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation, Ontario Creates See the Box Office tab (Domestic) and International tab (International and Worldwide) for more Cumulative Box Office Records.Īpril 15th, 2022 (Limited) by Mongrel Mediaįamily Drama, Dysfunctional Family, Suicide, Writing and Writers, Musicians All Time Domestic Box Office (Rank 12,701-12,800)Īll Time Worldwide Box Office (Rank 23,401-23,500)Īll Time Domestic Box Office for R Movies (Rank 4,401-4,500)Īll Time Worldwide Box Office for R Movies (Rank 5,001-5,100)

All my puny sorrows by miriam toews