How can a book about suicide be heartbreaking and funny at the same time? How can a book with the thinnest of plots be completely compelling? I don’t know, but “All My Puny Sorrows” by Miriam Toews is a beautiful, thoughtful, engaging story of two sisters, one who wants to die, the other who wants her to live.
Yoli
is a forty-something-year-old woman who has made something of a mess of her
life but who loves her bright, beautiful, talented, suicidal sister, Elfrieda.
The bulk of this book is about Elf’s suicide attempt (not her first) and what
happens as the family rallies around her hospital bed. Most of the tension in
the book arises from the question of if Elf will attempt suicide again and if,
as Elf begs her, Yoli will help her end her life.
There
are scenes of Yoli and Elf’s childhood growing up in a rural Mennonite
community sliced in between hospital conversations between Yoli and Elf.
Outside the hospital room, life goes on. Yoli tries to manage her pending
divorce (her second), her teenager daughter’s budding romance, her own
disastrous romances, and her plucky, sweat-pant-wearing mother.
This
book made me cry, but it also made me laugh. Yoli is smart, funny, honest,
self-deprecating.
This is a story about the deep love between sisters, the pain of loss, the hilarity of everyday life, and mostly, the will to keep going.
This is a story about the deep love between sisters, the pain of loss, the hilarity of everyday life, and mostly, the will to keep going.
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