Women Talking by Miriam Toews Review

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About

The internationally bestselling novel based on real events. Now a major motion picture from writer/director Sarah Polley, starring Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, with Ben Whishaw and Frances McDormand.

“This amazing, sad, shocking, but touching novel, based on a real-life event, could be right out of The Handmaid's Tale.” --Margaret Atwood, on Twitter

"Scorching . . . Women Talking is a wry, freewheeling novel of ideas that touches on the nature of evil, questions of free will, collective responsibility, cultural determinism, and, above all, forgiveness." --New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice

One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.

Book

While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women―all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in―have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they’ve ever known or should they dare to escape?

Based on real events and told through the “minutes” of the women’s all-female symposium, Toews’s masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide.

Named a Best Book of the Year By

THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (Notable Books of the Year) * NPR.ORG* THE WASHINGTON POST * REAL SIMPLE * THE NEW YORK TIMES (PARUL SEHGAL'S TOP BOOKS OF THE YEAR) * SLATE * STAR TRIBUNE (MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL) * LITHUB * AUSTIN CHRONICLE * GOOP* ELECTRIC LITERATURE * KIRKUS REVIEWS * JEZEBEL* BUSTLE *PUBLISHERS WEEKLY * TIME* LIBRARY JOURNAL * THE AV CLUB * MASHABLE * VOX *

Excerpts from Amazon and Good Reads

Review

By Aurora Gómez

This story offers readers a raw, authentic, vulnerable yet powerful perspective of women and children facing unimaginable abuse, violence and oppression in their closed  Mennonite community. 

The story  is set in a simple barn with a circle of women of varied ages and perspectives finding a way to transcend their differing opinions and responses to their systemic abuse and find a lasting solution. The dialog is elegant in it's simplicity and the wisdom shared is profound. 

This story is not for children or the faint of heart. The subject matter will be triggering to most  and will certainly elicit strong emotions and opinions. But regardless of wether one agrees with the final decision or not the elegance of thinking and expression are expansive and life-changing.

While this story focuses on extreme scenarios of abuse, gaslighting and oppression it sheds light on the more insidious forms of the same that many of us live with daily without realizing it. 

This was a life-afferming story for me. I found myself changing and growing along with the women in the story. I was inspired by their courage as well as their faith. I recommend this story to mature readers but also caution that this story maybe very triggering to survivors of mental, emotional, physical or sexual abuse. I had to take my time and read in small increments. I would try to stay in touch with my somatic responses as I read. If I noticed I was having a somatic response I would take a break to do breathing and grounding exercises. 

About Miriam Toews

Miriam Toews was born and raised in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada, the second daughter of Mennonite parents and a direct descendant of one of Steinbach's first settlers, Klaas R. Reimer, who arrived in Manitoba in 1874 from the Ukraine. 

Her best-selling novels, which include Fight Night, Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, and A Complicated Kindness, have won numerous literary awards: the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award, and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. She is also a three-time finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Toews had a leading role in the feature film, Silent Light, written and directed by Carlos Reygadas, and winner of the 2007 Cannes Jury Prize, an experience that informed her fifth novel, Irma Voth. 

Thank you for honoring the feminine and thank you for visiting. Wishing you peace.

You can find more information about Aurora Ferrer and Self-Actualization thru Women's Empowerment at:http://www.empowerment.ws/

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