Andrew David MacDonald recommends reading A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews right now
CBC Books | | Posted: August 4, 2020 5:20 PM | Last Updated: August 4, 2020
CBC Books reached out to Canadian writers for the books they recommend during uncertain times.
Andrew David MacDonald is a Canadian novelist whose debut book is When We Were Vikings. The novel follows Zelda, a 21-year-old Viking enthusiast who lives with her older brother Gert. When Zelda finds out that Gert has been resorting to questionable means to make money for the both of them, Zelda decides to launch into her own quest: to become a living legend.
He recommends reading the novel A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews.
"Nomi Nickel, Toews' narrator, is a Lou Reed-loving Mennonite girl from a small town in Manitoba. Known to some as 'Swivelhead,' a sobriquet referring to a curiosity often interpreted as defiance, Nomi lives with her church-abiding father, Ray and, until three years ago, her non-conformist sister, Tash, who recently left the community's restrictive atmosphere for bohemian California. As Nomi gets ready to graduate high school and swan dive into adulthood, she finds herself wondering if there's life beyond church and working in the local chicken processing plant.
Read the first page of Toews's award-winning novel and tell me you aren't immediately charmed into submission.
"As the fabric of her faith, family and community begin to tear in baffling ways, Nomi never loses her capacity for hope. And I guess that's how I feel about the world right now: despite passing through alternating bouts of sadness and depression and anxiety and anger, I somehow still feel I've been given the complicated blessing of living in this messy, beautiful world.
"Read the first page of Toews's award-winning novel and tell me you aren't immediately charmed into submission."