A Kind of Complicatedness
I recently completed reading the book "A Complicated Kindness" by Miriam Toews. It has been on Macleans' fiction bestseller list in Canada for 40 weeks. I generally don't make time to read anything on the best-seller list, mostly because I don't really enjoy popular culture literature. I ended up reading this book for a few reasons, 1) because it was required reading in my literature class, and 2) because it focuses on a Mennonite community.

The response to this book that I have formulated is in two parts: my thoughts as a critic of literature, and my thoughts as a Mennonite.
The book is quite well-written. It is easy to read, and easy to pick it up without losing track of where you've been. It's depictions of small town life, and of the various characters, with their various afflictions, are endearing and humourous. If one can remove any kind of emotional attachment to the institutional which is being criticized, the book is quite enjoyable to read.
However, I cannot easily remove myself from the people and institutions that are being criticized in the book. The book openly criticizes the Mennonite institution, and lightly veils the town (Steinbach), and only hints at an actual church. I am a proud Mennonite, and I love Steinbach. Steinbach is a town in southern Manitoba, with a predominant Mennonite community and steeped in Mennonite history and culture. I grew up in a Mennonite community that wished they were Steinbach. We were smaller, poorer, less sophisticated, and far less capable of actually influencing town and business behaviour. Still, I know the hurt that can be caused by this kind of community. I know that mental illnesses can go undiagnosed and ignored, if not even punished. I have seen the hurt that causes books like this to be written. I am not surprised to see books like this one, but I am sad that they are so popular (though it more likely that the small-town nature of the book is most likely the popular feature, not the anti-Mennonite propaganda). My own novel (assuming I finish it) won't be totally redeeming either, but it will be moreso than this one is.

The literary community loves this book, and people think its a fun book to read. The impression I get from Mennonites is quite different. Even the Mennonites that like the book (and there are some), think it is terribly depressing, to quote Rudy Wiebe, "grim, grim, grim".

I can and should go into my deeper theological problems with the book, moreso with the common misconceptions people hold that are expressed in the book. Perhaps at another time.

My sister said that she liked the book, but wouldn't recommend to people, because she didn't want them to think that the book profiled her own experience within a Mennonite community. I recommend the book, but only to people who know how to read a novel without attaching the depictions within it as fact and who have a healthy view of the Mennonite community.

   [ posted by William @ 9:05 PM ]