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A review by ink_andivy
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
5.0
“Women Talking is both a reaction through fiction to these true-life events, and an act of female imagination.”
This is the line that precedes the start of Miriam Toews’ Women Talking. The true-life events refer to the occurrences that took place in a remote mennonite community in Bolivia in the early 2000’s in which women were knocked unconscious in the night and raped by men of their community. Toews goes on to imagine and write the conversations of these women as they decide whether they should stay and fight, or leave the only community and lifestyle they have ever known. These conversations take place in the hayloft of a barn and are given through the account of August Epp, who the women ask to record their conversations onto paper, as they cannot read or write.
I think the best books we read are often the ones in which someone has been given a voice. I don’t believe the fact that these are fictional characters and conversations changes that. This is a novel that is literally “just” women talking—their conversations are of the upmost importance, not only just to them and the other members of the community, but on a much larger scale. These women talking are determining their futures and their children’s futures. One of the women is pregnant with a child conceived through the rapes, and another has a three year old daughter who was raped. These conversations are about balancing love and hate—how to survive in a world where things like this can happen, where women can be so brutally violated by those they have loved and cared for.
Despite these brutalities, this novel is not about a lack of hope. I think that is the most important part about it—Toews empowers these women through the conversations. The characters are deftly crafted—they are funny, loving, and intelligent. The women’s intimacy with one another is portrayed through the small actions and comments that August describes, and yet that they are unique individuals is also strongly conveyed. There is also a wonderful sense of humour to Toews’ writing, which I discovered when I started reading A Complicated Kindness. I personally loved the characters of Autje and Neitje, who are the teenagers among the group of women. Their strength and intelligence is interspersed with their indifference to the older women talking, as they partake in distractions such as tying their hair together in one conjoined braid.
The only complaint I have is that I was not able to follow the women out of the hayloft at the end of the novel. Instead, August Epp stays in the hayloft and we are not given the perspectives of the women as they enact their decision (you do find out what that decision is, I’m just trying not to spoil it here). Of course this has meaning in itself; perhaps the acting out of the decision itself wasn’t so important as the conversations that decided it.
This is the line that precedes the start of Miriam Toews’ Women Talking. The true-life events refer to the occurrences that took place in a remote mennonite community in Bolivia in the early 2000’s in which women were knocked unconscious in the night and raped by men of their community. Toews goes on to imagine and write the conversations of these women as they decide whether they should stay and fight, or leave the only community and lifestyle they have ever known. These conversations take place in the hayloft of a barn and are given through the account of August Epp, who the women ask to record their conversations onto paper, as they cannot read or write.
I think the best books we read are often the ones in which someone has been given a voice. I don’t believe the fact that these are fictional characters and conversations changes that. This is a novel that is literally “just” women talking—their conversations are of the upmost importance, not only just to them and the other members of the community, but on a much larger scale. These women talking are determining their futures and their children’s futures. One of the women is pregnant with a child conceived through the rapes, and another has a three year old daughter who was raped. These conversations are about balancing love and hate—how to survive in a world where things like this can happen, where women can be so brutally violated by those they have loved and cared for.
Despite these brutalities, this novel is not about a lack of hope. I think that is the most important part about it—Toews empowers these women through the conversations. The characters are deftly crafted—they are funny, loving, and intelligent. The women’s intimacy with one another is portrayed through the small actions and comments that August describes, and yet that they are unique individuals is also strongly conveyed. There is also a wonderful sense of humour to Toews’ writing, which I discovered when I started reading A Complicated Kindness. I personally loved the characters of Autje and Neitje, who are the teenagers among the group of women. Their strength and intelligence is interspersed with their indifference to the older women talking, as they partake in distractions such as tying their hair together in one conjoined braid.
The only complaint I have is that I was not able to follow the women out of the hayloft at the end of the novel. Instead, August Epp stays in the hayloft and we are not given the perspectives of the women as they enact their decision (you do find out what that decision is, I’m just trying not to spoil it here). Of course this has meaning in itself; perhaps the acting out of the decision itself wasn’t so important as the conversations that decided it.