Miriam Toews

So scary.

By Miriam Toews.

And my friend recommended this to me as something she thought I would like.

And she was very correct.

Through a dual POV and timeline, the story follows Mennonite women-- follows a Mennonite woman and her niece surviving the, the Russian Revolution amid a pacifist patriarchal society which places more value on a man's authority than his actions.

The novel combines the themes of Miriam Toews', uh, Women Talking with the devastating family drama and setting of Kristin Lash's The Last Russian Doll.

In 1907 in southern Russia, Agnetha Martins, uh, longs for autonomy and escape from her abusive brother, Cornelius.

But when her mother and sister-in-law die, Agnetha inherits their responsibilities, keeping her father's house and raising her young sisters and niece, Marie.

It really does.

We move from Atwood, who writes to document a structure, to Miriam Toews, who is writing to document a void.

Yeah.

Miriam Toews' new memoir, A Truce That Is Not Peace, is an entirely different architecture.

It really is.

Atwood looks outward at the world and her place in it, right? But Toews is forced to look entirely inward at a space that has been violently emptied.

So she writes.

Not because it solves anything, but because the alternative, which is surrendering completely to the silence, is entirely unsurvivable.

It was the absolute core of the film's authenticity and power.

That concept of finding the exact right tone for trauma leads us to our final film in this section, Miriam Toews' novel, All My Puny Sorrows, which was adapted in 2021.

Toews wrote this novel drawing on very deep personal grief regarding the suicide of her own sister.

It follows two sisters, Yoli and Elf, who grew up in a strict Mennonite community in Manitoba.

Then you see a shift to adapting global literary giants like Atwood, where the themes transcend national borders.

Following that, you have the era of massive international co-productions where directors like Ang Lee and Anthony Minghella carry Canadian novels to Oscar dominance.

And today, the contemporary norm seems to be authors like Emma Donoghue and Miriam Toews being intimately involved in adapting their own work into mid-budget, emotionally complex dramas.

The boundaries are blurring.