SarahJanet's Books

A Complicated Kindness

A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews.

This is a book that I read for the new book club I’ve managed to talk my way into. It’s a Young Adult Book Club (meaning they read YA books but are adults), and they always have excellent taste in books so I’ve been looking forward to reading them. This is actually an adult book, but it was nominated for an award (by…somebody, I dunno) as best adult book for young adults. It’s one that’s been consistently popular in the library for the past year or so, and I’ve been meaning to read it so it was nice to have the impetus.

I enjoyed the book quite a lot, more than I expected to. (My sister thought it sucked, but she and I often have diverse opinions in books. We passionately love a lot of the same books, but there are a lot of books one of us likes but the other hates.) It’s the story of a girl in a very small town in Manitoba, and the entire town is Mennonite. This girl (a teenager) is desperate to fit in, but simultaneously doesn’t want to be like everybody else in the town. Her mother and sister have both left, and she’s left alone with her dad, awkwardly trying to raise her when he doesn’t understand her.

It reminded me a lot of Margaret Laurence, who I also really like (and who my sister, not surprisingly, really hates), particularly the protagonist, who I thought really resembled the main character in A Bird in the House. (I haven’t read it since high school, so goodness knows what her name was.) I thought the story was interesting and well written, the concept worked really well, the characters were believable even if they were absent characters, and the plot moved at a great pace. Thumbs up to this one, although I can understand why some people don’t like it.

posted by SarahJanet @ 3:17 PM