Publishing Company Blog | Miriam Toews: ‘I worried people would think, what is wrong with this family?’

Miriam Toews: ‘I worried people would think, what is wrong with this family?’

Written By Unknown on Saturday, May 2, 2015 | 7:18 AM

The Canadian author of All My Puny Sorrows talks about growing up a Mennonite and how she managed to transform family tragedy into a novel suffused with joy

I meet Miriam Toews as she is awaiting the announcement of the Folio prize, for which her novel All My Puny Sorrows has been shortlisted. Neither of us is really expecting it to win (“Believe me, I know,” she says, breezily), and sure enough, later that evening the prize goes to Akhil Sharma for his quietly devastating Family Life. Her book was also shortlisted for the Wellcome prize, which on Wednesday went to Marion Coutts’s account of her husband’s terminal illness, The Iceberg.

But while All My Puny Sorrows, which is very funny, may not be a natural award-winner – prizes generally require books to be serious and literary, as if the two things were one and the same – it has captured the hearts of critics and readers alike this year, bringing its Canadian author a new level of recognition in Britain. And if there were a prize for joyfulness in fiction, Toews would win hands down for the near-miraculous feat of transforming suicide and grief into a narrative packed with laugh-out-loud delights.

There is criticism of my work, but with Mennonites, it’s not overt. Women whisper to me, ‘I am Nomi’ – that’s satisfying