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A review by floralfox
Irma Voth by Miriam Toews
3.0
Irma Voth is a young woman that has immigrated from Canada to Mexico with her family to live in a Mennonite village. The novel opens with her marriage to Jorge, a local, and her father's rage that she has married outside of the Mennonite community. Her father demands and forces the young couple to live in another house on the family lot and work the farm, but he refuses to pay them and has shunned them so that nobody in the family may talk to them. Jorge, restless and sketchy, disappears for long bouts of time. Irma spends most of her time alone, and she is very uncertain of herself (to most questions she is asked during the entirety of the novel, she answers, "I don't know.")
Her little sister Aggie often sneaks away to talk to Irma, and her mother sends things along, so her relationships with the other women in her family aren't ruined but they are maintained secretly.
Irma's father is angry and upset that a movie director has come to shoot a movie about Mennonites in the village. Irma, who can speak German, Spanish, and English, ends up working as a translator on the movie. The script is written in Spanish, but performed in German by a German actress who is anxious and worried most of the time. Somehow, working on the movie gives Irma a sense of purpose that she hasn't had before (in one scene, from her childhood, Irma recalls going to the doctor because she believes she has died, but doesn't know how or why and can't determine if she herself is actually still alive). She wonders, “How do I behave in this world without following the directions of my father, my husband, or God?”
You think the movie-making business is going to be the main part of the novel, but is isn't.
Eventually we learn that Irma's father's history of abuse is long and dark. Aggie keeps coming to the set to visit and Irma keeps insisting she needs to go home. One night Irma hears her mother and two young brother singing (psalms, I think?) in the middle of the night and realizes what is happening. She rushes into the house, catches her father beating Aggie, and takes Aggie away from him to live with her. They are still in dire straits, though, with no money and with the threat that Irma's father is going to kick them out of the house so that another family can move in.
Irma's mother is pregnant again, and she gives birth to the baby without Irma's knowledge. Irma sells all of the drugs that her husband has been storing at their place to run away and get Aggie far away from her father. But her mother insists that she take the new baby girl, too. She knows that her husband is a violent misogynist and that she will lose this girl, too. She tells Irma to take little Ximena and she will just tell the father that she has died of a disease that requires a quick burial (he will believe it because it is not the first time one of their babies has died of this disease).
The second part of the novel follows Irma and Aggie in Chihuahua City finding a way to settle and survive, and we learn that the reason they immigrated to Mexico was because their father killed their older sister Katie and tried to present it to the police as an accident. They weren't buying it. A young, teenage Irma lied to the police to protect their father, and they disappeared into the night.
The novel ended a little abruptly to me and seemed to be juggling many different storylines, so I gave it 3 stars. I still enjoyed it because Toews is a uniquely talented writer, but I didn't feel like it was my favorite of her works.
Her little sister Aggie often sneaks away to talk to Irma, and her mother sends things along, so her relationships with the other women in her family aren't ruined but they are maintained secretly.
Irma's father is angry and upset that a movie director has come to shoot a movie about Mennonites in the village. Irma, who can speak German, Spanish, and English, ends up working as a translator on the movie. The script is written in Spanish, but performed in German by a German actress who is anxious and worried most of the time. Somehow, working on the movie gives Irma a sense of purpose that she hasn't had before (in one scene, from her childhood, Irma recalls going to the doctor because she believes she has died, but doesn't know how or why and can't determine if she herself is actually still alive). She wonders, “How do I behave in this world without following the directions of my father, my husband, or God?”
You think the movie-making business is going to be the main part of the novel, but is isn't.
Spoiler
Eventually we learn that Irma's father's history of abuse is long and dark. Aggie keeps coming to the set to visit and Irma keeps insisting she needs to go home. One night Irma hears her mother and two young brother singing (psalms, I think?) in the middle of the night and realizes what is happening. She rushes into the house, catches her father beating Aggie, and takes Aggie away from him to live with her. They are still in dire straits, though, with no money and with the threat that Irma's father is going to kick them out of the house so that another family can move in.
Irma's mother is pregnant again, and she gives birth to the baby without Irma's knowledge. Irma sells all of the drugs that her husband has been storing at their place to run away and get Aggie far away from her father. But her mother insists that she take the new baby girl, too. She knows that her husband is a violent misogynist and that she will lose this girl, too. She tells Irma to take little Ximena and she will just tell the father that she has died of a disease that requires a quick burial (he will believe it because it is not the first time one of their babies has died of this disease).
The second part of the novel follows Irma and Aggie in Chihuahua City finding a way to settle and survive, and we learn that the reason they immigrated to Mexico was because their father killed their older sister Katie and tried to present it to the police as an accident. They weren't buying it. A young, teenage Irma lied to the police to protect their father, and they disappeared into the night.
The novel ended a little abruptly to me and seemed to be juggling many different storylines, so I gave it 3 stars. I still enjoyed it because Toews is a uniquely talented writer, but I didn't feel like it was my favorite of her works.