Discursive, revelatory ... As fluent in the comic register as it is in the tragic ... The book is less a linear narrative than a neat pile of shattered glass, one shard picked up at a time, in no discernible order.
A layered confrontation with the deaths, grief, and guilt that have animated her work for nearly 30 years, providing haunting insights on how to live after tragic loss ... Without the constraints of the novel—namely the need to advance a plot—Toews lets her mind loose on the page ... Discursive ... The reader bobs along in the author’s stream of consciousness, riding crests of despair, anger, and hilarity as Toews assembles the shards of her past to investigate her will to write, which is deeply entwined with her will to live.
Miriam Toews brings heart, bite and wit to all her work ... A well-developed sense of the absurd is her magic weight-lifter ... Both a tender tribute to Marjorie and a thought-provoking meditation on three linked themes: writing, silence and suicide ... Both very serious and very funny. Her frankness and wit recall Anne Lamott, minus the sermonizing, while her short bursts of epiphanies recall Jenny Offill ... There’s a lot of laughter in this memoir.
There are amusing stories of learning to embrace her role as the kooky grandmother to rapscallion grandchildren interspersed with clear-eyed observations about the sheer muscle it takes to care for her aging (and still delightfully sharp) mother ... Gorgeously written.
This book is a triumph ... It might sink a less buoyant spirit but Toews makes comedy out of the chaos ... Her work’s so intimate you worry you’re intruding, but it’s fine, she welcomes you in.
The book’s six sections dip into their own unique content and themes that overlap and heighten the memoir as a whole ... Let’s not overlook the writing, the fine, fine writing. Lyrical yet plainspoken, vivid and rich. There is intimacy in what Toews is willing to share and in the way she chooses to share it. Reading this memoir is like reading a journal: private, surprising, and vulnerable.
Creatively structured, gorgeously written, and flat-out astonishing ... The reader is whirlwinded by experiences bizarre, comedic, tragic, and wondrous.
Unforgettable ... A guttural exhumation of grief that ultimately weighs the joys of living against its sorrows, and tries to figure out why some of us can’t endure the math. Formally inventive and exquisitely executed, Toews’ memoir shows us that bearing witness to one’s own grief—however disjointed, morbid or painful it is—can grant reprieve.
