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A review by daiinty
Women Talking by Miriam Toews
2.0
“We are wasting time, pleads Greta, by passing this burden, this sack of stones, from one to the next, by pushing our pain away. We mustn’t do this. We mustn’t play Hot Potato with our pain. Let’s absorb it ourselves, each of us, she says. Let’s inhale it, let’s digest it, let’s process it into fule.” — miriam toews
the title of this book definitely didn’t lie: the women do indeed talk. and that’s pretty much all that happens throughout the span of the novel. i read this book for my book club and was horrified to learn the events of this novel were based off of a true story. i went into this book expecting a feminist novelization of a true story, but instead we get this very philosophical round table discussion about religion, morality, and what it means to truly leave the colony.
there were parts of this book where i was simply just bored. the conversations, while realistic, were very circular and i found myself repeatedly losing interest. my biggest critique about the novel is that this so called feminist narrative is told through the POV of a man, august. i know people argue that it’s because the story is framed in the structure of minutes and the women are illiterate, but it still didn’t make sense to me. the “telling the story in minutes” really fell flat in my opinion when the women FINALLY left and it happened in basically a page. i felt like we’ve painstakingly been building up to this moment the whole novel only for the actual leaving of the women to be a blip on the page. a very odd choice to me.
the title of this book definitely didn’t lie: the women do indeed talk. and that’s pretty much all that happens throughout the span of the novel. i read this book for my book club and was horrified to learn the events of this novel were based off of a true story. i went into this book expecting a feminist novelization of a true story, but instead we get this very philosophical round table discussion about religion, morality, and what it means to truly leave the colony.
there were parts of this book where i was simply just bored. the conversations, while realistic, were very circular and i found myself repeatedly losing interest. my biggest critique about the novel is that this so called feminist narrative is told through the POV of a man, august. i know people argue that it’s because the story is framed in the structure of minutes and the women are illiterate, but it still didn’t make sense to me. the “telling the story in minutes” really fell flat in my opinion when the women FINALLY left and it happened in basically a page. i felt like we’ve painstakingly been building up to this moment the whole novel only for the actual leaving of the women to be a blip on the page. a very odd choice to me.