Book
A complicated kindness : a novel
Record details
- ISBN: 9780676976137
- ISBN: 0676976131
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Physical Description:
print
246 p. ; 21 cm. - Publisher: Toronto : Vintage Canada, c2004.
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Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at Camosun College Library.
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- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
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| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Circulation Modifier | Holdable? | Status | Due Date | Courses |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lansdowne Library | PS 8589 O6352 C64 2004 (Text) | 26040002715155 | Main Collection | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Random House, Inc.
Sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel longs to hang out with Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull in New York Cityâs East Village. Instead sheâs trapped in East Village, Manitoba, a small town whose population is Mennonite: âthe most embarrassing sub-sect of people to belong to if youâre a teenager.â East Village is a town with no train and no bar whose job prospects consist of slaughtering chickens at the Happy Family Farms abattoir or churning butter for tourists at the pioneer village. Ministered with an iron fist by Nomiâs uncle Hans, a.k.a. The Mouth of Darkness, East Village is a town thatâs tall on rules and short on fun: no dancing, drinking, rock ânâ roll, recreational sex, swimming, make-up, jewellery, playing pool, going to cities or staying up past nine oâclock.
As the novel begins, Nomi struggles to cope with the back-to-back departures three years earlier of Tash, her beautiful and mouthy sister, and Trudie, her warm and spirited mother. She lives with her father, Ray, a sweet yet hapless schoolteacher whose love is unconditional but whose parenting skills amount to benign neglect. Father and daughter deal with their losses in very different ways. Ray, a committed elder of the church, seeks to create an artificial sense of order by reorganizing the city dump late at night. Nomi, on the other hand, favours chaos as she tries to blunt her pain through âdrugs and imagination.â Together they live in a limbo of unanswered questions.
Nomiâs first person narrative shifts effortlessly between the present and the past. Within the present, Nomi goes through the motions of finishing high school while flagrantly rebelling against Mennonite tradition. She hangs out on Suicide Hill, hooks up with a boy named Travis, goes on the Pill, wanders around town, skips class and cranks Led Zeppelin. But the past is never far from her mind as she remembers happy times with her mother and sister â as well as the painful events that led them to flee town. Throughout, in a voice both defiant and vulnerable, she offers hilarious and heartbreaking reflections on life, death, family, faith and love.
Eventually Nomiâs grief â and a growing sense of hypocrisy â cause her to spiral ever downward to a climax that seems at once startling and inevitable. But even when one more loss is heaped on her piles of losses, Nomi maintains hope and finds the imagination and willingness to envision what lies beyond.
Few novels in recent years have generated as much excitement as A Complicated Kindness. Winner of the Governor Generalâs Award and a Giller Prize Finalist, Miriam Toewsâs third novel has earned both critical acclaim and a long and steady position on our national bestseller lists. In the Globe and Mail, author Bill Richardson writes the following: âThere is so much thatâs accomplished and fine. The momentum of the narrative, the quality of the storytelling, the startling images, the brilliant rendering of a time and place, the observant, cataloguing eye of the writer, her great grace. But if I had to name Miriam Toewsâs crowning achievement, it would be the creation of Nomi Nickel, who deserves to take her place beside Daisy Goodwill Flett, Pi Patel and Hagar Shipley as a brilliantly realized character for whom the reader comes to care, okay, comes to love.â
This town is so severe. And silent. It makes me crazy, the silence. I wonder if a person can die from it. The town office building has a giant filing cabinet full of death certificates that say choked to death on his own anger or suffocated from unexpressed feelings of unhappiness. Silentium. People here just canât wait to die, it seems. Itâs the main event. The only reason weâre not all snuffed at birth is because that would reduce our suffering by a lifetime. My guidance counsellor has suggested to me that I change my attitude about this place and learn to love it. But I do, I told her. Oh, thatâs rich, she said. Thatâs rich. . .
Weâre Mennoni
