A Complicated Kindness

The January pick for yowbooks is A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews. A coming-of-age story set in an isolated Mennonite community in Manitoba, the novel is narrated by sixteen year old Nomi Nickel who is trying to come to terms with her mother and sister's flight from home and community while also dealing with other usual teenage angsts (boys, drugs, school, the future, Happy Farms Chicken Abatoire....). Since I will be floating down the Amazon the day of the meeting, I will post my impressions here.

Overall Enjoyment: 7 (It takes everything I have to resist those decimal points Tim!)
Literary Quality: 6
Suitability for a Bookclub discussion: Hard to tell. Perhaps a 5. I'm wondering if we should drop this category -- it might prejudice people from the beginning!

Cynical, sad, as well as funny (in a dark kind of way), I enjoyed the book, although a quick search on the Internet indicates to me that most people either really loved it or totally hated it. Not surprisingly, a lot of the commentaries revolve around the dismal portrayal of life as a teen, or life in general, in the community of East Village. At the very least, it will spurn discussion (hmmmmm ... maybe I should adjust my "suitability" rating).

One of the things that I enjoyed was the occasional references to the Canadian Mennonites living in Paraguay. Approximately 9,000 strong, these Canadian Paraguayans, normally living isolated lives in the wilds (Chaco), of Paraguay are becoming increasingly visible due to changes in Canadian citizenship policy. Canadian children born after February 14, 1977 outside of Canada, to a Canadian parent also born outside of Canada will lose their citizenship if they do not have a year or so of residency in Canada before their twenty-eigth birthday. Rushing to not lose this link, Canadian Paraguayans are rushing to Canada en masse to live with long lost relatives and complete a year of two of high school. Some of them have even made it into the book! By the way -- if you fall into this category of Canadian citizenship, best to visit the Canadian Embassy or Consulate nearest you.

Enjoy the discussion! For non-yowbookers, here is a link to the first chapter of the book.

Also, here is a link to a September 2004 article in Maclean's on the Canadian Mennonites in Paraguay.