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A Complicated Kindness
 
 

A Complicated Kindness (Hardcover)

de Miriam Toews (Author)
3.4étoiles sur 5  Voir tous les commentaires (36 évaluations de client)

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Amazon.ca

A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews's third novel, is a very funny book about going AWOL in Mennonite country. Sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel lives with her depressingly cheerful dad Ray on the edge of East Village--not the hip one in New York City where she would prefer to be but a small, backward Mennonite town in Manitoba ruled by a pious pastor whom Nomi calls The Mouth. Several years before, Nomi's rebellious older sister, Tash, left town on the back of her rocker boyfriend's motorcycle. Not long afterwards, her mother, Trudi, also disappeared for reasons never fully disclosed. As Nomi explains at the outset, "Half of our family, the better-looking half, is missing."

As Nomi drives endlessly about the countryside with her own Lou Reed-loving boyfriend and puts off finishing an assignment for her oddly attentive English teacher, she pieces together her childhood memories in an effort to understand why she and Ray have been deserted. Toews's portrayal of teenage angst, Mennonite-style, is hilarious. East Village, Nomi observes, "was created as a kind of no-frills bunker in which to live austerely, shun wrongdoers and kill some time, and joy, before the Rapture." Regarding the pleasures of the next world, she quips, "I guess we'll be able to float around asking people to punch us in the stomach as hard as they can and not experience any pain, which could be fun for one afternoon." Nomi's steady patter of repartee and reminiscences grows a bit tiresome after a while, especially as this is a novel in which very little happens until the last 50 pages. Toews can't seem to resist a good one-liner, even at the expense of plot. For a light summer read with laugh-out-loud potential, however, A Complicated Kindness is the ticket. --Lisa Alward



From Publishers Weekly

A 16-year-old rebels against the conventions of her strict Mennonite community and tries to come to terms with the collapse of her family in this insightful, irreverent coming-of-age novel. In bleak rural Manitoba, Nomi longs for her older sister, Tash ("she was so earmarked for damnation it wasn't even funny"), and mother, Trudie, each of whom has recently fled fundamentalist Christianity and their town. Her gentle, uncommunicative father, Ray, isn't much of a sounding board as Nomi plunges into bittersweet memory and grapples with teenage life in a "kind of a cult with pretend connections to some normal earthly conventions." Once a "curious, hopeful child" Nomi now relies on biting humor as her life spins out of control—she stops attending school, shaves her head and wanders around in a marijuana-induced haze—while Ray sells off most of their furniture, escapes on all-night drives and increasingly withdraws into himself. Still, she and Ray are linked in a tender, if fragile, partnership as each slips into despair. Though the narration occasionally unravels into distracting stream of consciousness, the unsentimental prose and the poignant character interactions sustain reader interest. Bold, tender and intelligent, this is a clear-eyed exploration of belief and belonging, and the irresistible urge to escape both.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

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36 évaluations
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3.4étoiles sur 5 (36 évaluations de client)
 
 
 
 
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27 internautes sur 28 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
5.0étoiles sur 5 Life's hard questions, Oct. 11 2004
I found this book fascinating. On first reading, this book seemed to be one teenager's long downward spiral into depression, interspersed with a few beautiful or humorous moments. But a shadowy glimpse of a some more complex themes drew me back to it for a second reading, where I was delighted to find the writing tight and full of well-chosen imagery and recurring themes.

The narrator, Nomi, writes near the beginning: "People here just can't wait to die, it seems. It's the main event. The only reason we're 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, that's rich, she said. That's rich."

Nomi chafes against the inflexibility and lack of forgiveness in many members of her religious community, but as she struggles to understand the undercurrents which have driven her mother and elder sister into the void beyond the town, she begins to be able to tap into the honesty of her family to imagine something bigger and better than the only place she knows. "I have a problem with endings," she writes, and she cannot satisfy her English teacher by drawing her essays to a neat close. In the same way, she can't seem to accept her pastor uncle's neat package of rigid definitions explaining her existence, with no mysteries or forgiveness for weakness. When a nurse at the hospital criticises her invalid friend Lydia for being so needy, Nomi objects 'But isn't that what a hosp...(ital is for?)" When the church throws out a man for being unable to overcome alcoholism, the reader wants to ask, "But isn't that what a church community is for?" Nomi has an innate sense that something is fundamentally wrong with her environment. But she recognises kindness, too, "in the eyes of people when they look at you and don't know what to say." Her uncle, "The Mouth", always knows what to say, and it never fails to be irrelevant and discouraging. But she values those whose love and concern go beyond the limitations of their prescribed answers, who can only love her and feel confused, without lashing out because they feel threatened by her ragged search to unite her family and find healing.

Nomi's dad, Toews' best character, embodies this combination of deep love and confusion. He holds rigidly to the prescribed order of the community while gently falling apart with grief. Wonderfully complex, Ray wears a suit every day, even gardening, wins an award for perfect church attendance and listens to the radio hymn programme every night. But he spends nights secretly rearranging rubbish at the dump and slowly selling off the household furniture while letting his daughter see, with a sad and affectionate humour, that he doesn't know the answers.

Toews addresses two different kinds of nostalgia: the oppressive desire of The Mouth to cling to concrete vestiges of a past lifestyle, such as the town's windmill, and Nomi's fond remembrance of living people and experiences in the community that are both shared and uniquely hers. Even though I desperately wanted to tell her at the end of the book, "fly away!" I was moved by her dad's loyal attempt to encourage and empower her in the only way he knows how.

I think readers who are confident they know everything about God already and have set answers to life's questions will struggle with this book and find it irreverent. But I think other readers will be inspired by Nomi's quest in faith to find acceptance, forgiveness, joy and a love which extends beyond tidy definitions.

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4 internautes sur 4 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
5.0étoiles sur 5 It's not that complicated., Sep 14 2006
This review is from: A Complicated Kindness (Paperback)
I was reminded so many times while reading A COMPLICATED KINDNESS of the book THE BARK OF THE DOGWOOD with its themes of family dysfunction, memory, repressed memories, struggles to freedom, and a host of other scenarios and ideas that played throughout this novel. Set in Manitoba, Nomi is the main character who struggles with her famlies religious zealousness and fragile existence. Dealing with the Mennonites and a coming-of-age tale that is anything but unusual, you'll find yourself drawn to this story in a way that won't let you put the book down. But the novel isn't all darkness. There's a great deal of humor and wit in it. If you liked the novels THE KITE RUNNER and BARK OF THE DOGWOOD, then this book will work for you. Of couse, the settings are entirely different for all three, but the same themes of struggle are there. Great stuff, all.
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10 internautes sur 13 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
2.0étoiles sur 5 A Complicated Tedium, Jui 17 2005
It's hard to pan a book I set out to like, but despite the awards, this book does not deserve the listing among the Canadian greats. Set in a small Mennonite town on the Manitoba prairie, where all is controlled by the rigid expectations of the religious community, Nomi searches for meaning with typical adolescent angst, but some less than typical issues of family and faith.

Although Nomi offers a good take on the adolescent voice, she never transcends the dead, uncaring, whine. As a result I lost patience with the affected boredom after about chapter 2. Many wonderful books offer a child's or adolescent's look at life, but most offer a sense of the individual's strength, or grace or intellect to engage the reader. This book never allows you to see the strength or beauty of the repressed soul underneath.

At a book club meeting comprised of a mixed group of readers - some of us prairie girls, some Mennonite, most not, we could not understand the awards that had been give to this book. We wondered if it's major draw was the antagonism towards religious communities which is so prevalent in the modern media. There are many better books that deal with the issues of isolation, repression and hypocricy that can exist in these communities. The characters in this book are often cardboard stereotypes - the repressive religious leader, the philandering teacher, even the rebellious daughter and her shallow boyfriend.

More profound conversations and language could be heard in the boysroom of the local highschool. Although the intent of the author may be to reenact the tedium, hopelessness and stilted conversation of an isolated teenager's life - you need more than that to keep a reader occupied.

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Commentaires client les plus récents

4.0étoiles sur 5 "A work of fierce originality and brilliance."
Sometimes the jacket blurbs get it right.

This is a gem of a book. (I can't bring myself to call it a 'novel'. Read more
Publié il y a 1 mois par Schmadrian

5.0étoiles sur 5 a truly great book
I consumed this book over the course of a few days. It was easy to read and I particularly enjoyed the casual writing style, the lack of use of parentheses to denote dialogue. Read more
Publié il y a 10 mois par CeeGeeKay

5.0étoiles sur 5 Amazing
This book is absolutely amazing. Sensitive, funny, engaging, I fell in love with it and have kept searching for another Toews book to give me the same level of reading pleasure,... Read more
Publié il y a 13 mois par Dani

1.0étoiles sur 5 Don't bother.
I tried reading A Complicated Kindess. I have a rule about books...I'll allow 75 pages, and if you haven't got me by then, it's over. Read more
Publié il y a 13 mois par MC

3.0étoiles sur 5 Enjoyable
It is well written and unique in its style (if not the approach). The story revolves around the life of a teenage mennonite girl and disolution of her family. Read more
Publié il y a 19 mois par Peter Cantelon

1.0étoiles sur 5 speechless
i had to do a book report for this novel and i found it difficult to catch on . it was very blan and very hard to pay attention. no life to it.
Publié il y a 23 mois par nella mella

1.0étoiles sur 5 Awful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I bought this book when it first came out in paperback. I read about seventy pages and returned it the next day. This miserable teenager was
a complete bore. Read more
Publié le Oct. 13 2007 par Carol Paterson

4.0étoiles sur 5 I was a bit complicated
While a look at fundamentalist thinking and how it is harmful is to be applauded, and I DO applaud it, the style of writing seemed distant to me and I couldn't warm up to this the... Read more
Publié le Mars 31 2007 par Bilgewal

5.0étoiles sur 5 Great book
I found this book fascinating. On first reading, this book seemed to be one teenager's long downward spiral into depression, interspersed with a few beautiful or humorous moments... Read more
Publié le Janv. 26 2007 par FKurt

2.0étoiles sur 5 Not bad, a little boring!
I cant help but feel that I wasted my time reading this book. It was well written and I can see why so many people enjoyed it but I personally found it a struggle. Read more
Publié le Sep 28 2006 par PGrout

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