Women Talking: A Novel

by Miriam Toews

A FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD: A transformative and necessary work--as completely unexpected as it is inspired--by the award-winning author of the bestselling novels All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness.

The sun rises on a quiet June morning in 2009. August Epp sits alone in the hayloft of a barn, anxiously bent over his notebook. He writes quickly, aware that his solitude will soon be broken. Eight women--ordinary grandmothers, mothers and teenagers; yet to August, each one extraordinary-- will climb the ladder into the loft, and the day's true task will begin. This task will be both simple and subversive: August, like the women, is a traditional Mennonite, and he has been asked to record a secret conversation.

Thus begins Miriam Toews' spellbinding novel. Gradually, as we hear the women's vivid voices console, tease, admonish, regale and debate each other, we piece together the reason for the gathering: they have forty-eight hours to make a life-altering choice on behalf of all the women and children in the colony. And like a vast night sky coming into view behind the bright sparks of their voices, we learn of the devastating events that have led to this moment.

Acerbic, funny, tender, sorrowful and wise, Women Talking is composed of equal parts humane love and deep anger. It is award-winning writer Miriam Toews' most astonishing novel to date, containing within its two short days and hayloft setting an expansive, timeless universe of thinking and feeling about women--and men--in our contemporary world.

• ISBN10: 0735273960
• ISBN13: 9780735273962
• Publish Date: 21 August 2018
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Publish Country: CA
• Imprint: Knopf Canada
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 240
• Language: English

Reviews

[Beth C.]

I'm...not sure how I feel about this novel. I found it interesting that these women, having been brutalized by the men of their colony, are telling their stories...through the eyes of a man. A man who has his own secrets, and was kicked out of the colony...who is barely a man in the eyes of those within...but a man nonetheless. It was almost as if the author was saying that no matter what happens, those women will never truly be able to escape? There's certainly food for thought here, not only about religion and dogma, or about the beliefs that isolate us or entrap us or center us, but about the values we place on ourselves and our loved ones. About what it takes to stand up for oneself, in a place where that has never before been allowed. And about what it means to stand up for oneself - to fight, to flee...or even to ignore.