Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Søster

All my puny sorrows broke my heart. But also made me laugh and thinking about the essence of living… The story of two sisters: one desperately trying to end her life and the other equally desperately seeking to save it, is a hard story to tell. It is tragic. And yes, Toews manages to express the raw feelings surrounding and flowing through everyone involved, and still she does not let us sink in despair. Plenty of black humour and irony, the way that the narrator just jumps between her thoughts and memories, the comfort and sadness the characters find in music and literature, there is so much to take from this book.
This all just felt honest, it hurt, it truly resonated with me- these little conversations we all had with family members in face of hardships, the impossible questions one asks themselves when a loved one keeps spiralling down, the frustration and fear when they are sick in the hospital, the way that grief comes and goes and how hard it is to move on (the passage about ‘shredding the guilt’ really struck me).
Toews serves beautiful prose, so authentic and sincere it almost feels like eavesdropping.

“Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard”

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vickyreptile's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Ya lo sabían los griegos, pero la tragedia y la comedia usualmente están bastante relacionadas. Miriam Toews también lo sabe, porque su forma de narrar la tragedia de dos hermanas, una con una vida terriblemente normal y la otra glamorosa, la primera con una fuerza vital que arrasa y la segunda con un instinto suicida agudísimo, es bellísima. En medio del drama, encuentra el espacio para el humor, para la risa cuando todo parece que se está yendo al tacho.
Me ha conmovido mucho Pequeñas desgracias sin importancia, su tratamiento de temas tan sensibles (la vida y la muerte, nada menos) es extremadamente humano, para nada solemne pero, a la vez, profundísimo.

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al3xa's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

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storia's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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savvylit's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

All My Puny Sorrows is a devastating book about a deep love between two sisters. Inspired by her own sister's death, Miriam Toews has written a book that is both beautiful and sorrowful in equal measures. It's clear that she knows all too well what it feels like loving someone who no longer wishes to live. All My Puny Sorrows is also one of the most astonishingly empathetic books about depression that I have ever encountered. This novel represents mental illness as a literal, genuine illness. Unfortunately, that is still a rare thing to encounter in art.

Highly highly recommend this to anyone who is willing to read such a deeply sad yet moving story.

Content Warnings