A Complicated Kindness

Miriam Toews

Knopf Canada

By Irene D’Souza

Miriam Toews’ beguiling novel, ‘A Complicated Kindness,’ explores the wonders of female adolescence colliding with the mores and beliefs of a fundamentalist Mennonite upbringing.

Set in the fictional town of East Village in rural Manitoba, the protagonist Nomi Nickel waxes philosophically on being a teenager of this beleaguered religious clan whose manifesto bans dancing, drinking, movies, makeup, and jewelry. Females are groomed to remain inline and intact or risk the ritual of shunning. Nomi’s tongue-in-cheek assessments of her society’s foibles and absurdities provide a thoughtful sobering cultural analysis of her life in the twenty-first century suspended in a dour and drab past, where light, laughter, and energy are forbidden to exist.

Nomi is burdened by the resentment the ones who are left behind feel towards the ones who have escaped. Her tough girl veneer covers the wound left by both her mother and sister leaving her behind to cope with the town’s harsh recriminations. Nomi rebels by not being a good Mennonite; she has a boyfriend, smokes pot, and speaks to American tourists who find her ‘simple life’ charming.

The deeply felt pain in Toews’ novel makes us consider what it means to be displaced from the community as well as being a mother.  Nomi yearns to escape but is willing to settle for a New York City phonebook. Toews brilliantly summons up with subtle precision teenage angst in the mean, stifling, claustrophobic world of religious fanatics. Toews’ nuanced writing is poignant without being cloying or sentimental. A Complicated Kindness is a timely novel that depicts the dark side of not-always-kind fundamentalism.

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