Irma Voth [Paperback]

I really urge you to go to your bookshop and read the first 7 pages of this book. They won't mind, especially as you'll probably buy it. The novel begins with Irma, the eponymous narrator, trying, unsuccessfully, to stop her husband from leaving. This is immediately followed by an account of how they fell in love. The first few pages also show Irma's major characteristics: in the face of cruelty, she often responds with kindness and warmth and humour, and she has a huge longing to be loved. It's a beautiful opening, and much more technically complex than it first appears. Seven pages, and I was in bits. Laughing, crying, the works.

Irma is 19, and sews dangerous words like 'lust' and 'agony' and 'Jorge' inside her dress. How can you do anything but like her? Her life in a Mennonite community in Mexico is hard, and filled with repression, graft and violence. A film crew turn up, and stir Irma's imagination. For those of you who like 'intertextuality' and all that stuff, Toews actually acted in a film very like the one whose creation she warmly satirises in the novel. For those who like jokes that also make you cry a bit, there's plenty here for you, too, especially when Irma's headstrong little sister Aggie is around; she's the sort of little girl who asks for a pint of beer, but is so sheltered, she says pint to rhyme with 'mint'.

It is also a novel of some depth. Irma is struggling to make sense of a certain event in her past, and the attendant guilt. She's sort of frozen by it. She's struggling, fundamentally, with the question of 'how to live'. These abstract notions are worked out through the story with great elegance.

As in her other books, Toews writes about people who are suffering. But she shows their resilience, too. She's never flippant, but never morose. That's a hard line to walk, and she does so perfectly. It deepens the sadness, I think, and the joy.

This is a charming novel about a young, 19 year old Mennonite woman set in Mexico.
I found the writing and, in particular, the dialogue quite basic and "every day" like. Indeed, to begin with, I didn't think I was going to enjoy this book, but it became strangely addictive and was a fairly quick read.
Knowing nothing about Mennonites, it taught me about their ways and customs. Irma speaks a handful of languages and there are parts of the story where she speaks in Spanish, for example, and there is no benefit of translation for the reader which I found a little frustrating.
Outlining the story in brief, Irma's husband Jorge has left her. To be truthful, it seemed a very odd relationship in the first place. A film director is making a movie about Mennonite people and he asks Irma to be a translator for the lead actor. This she agrees to do, but without the approval of her very strict, orthodox father. He resorts to evicting Irma from the house he has let out to her on her marriage. Because her younger sister Aggie has run away from home, this means she has the responsibility of caring for her also. Her perenially pregnant mother has had another baby and this child is woven in to the story also. The relationship between the sisters is very close, despite Aggie's frustrating teenage behaviour and, for me, this is where the book shines....in depicting this bond.
All in all, this is a sweet and gentle story, but, somehow it never quite challenges the reader enough to be memorable.

Irma Voth is a young woman of nineteen; she recently married against her father's wishes, and has even more recently been deserted by her husband, Jorge. Irma lives in northern Mexico, near Chihuahua, and is part of the Mennonite community - a strict religious group which has parallels with the Amish and, like the Amish, is not concerned with material matters or possessions and shuns the modern world of commercialism and consumerism. When a film crew arrives to make a film about the Mennonite community, which angers Irma's father, Irma makes the brave decision to work as a translator for the film director and, in doing so, comes into contact with people who live a very different life to hers.

Irma's father, however, is determined to prevent Irma, and more especially Irma's younger sister, thirteen-year-old Aggie, from becoming tainted by the film crew's modern ways and his behaviour towards his daughters becomes even more unreasonable and abusive than normal. After yet another painful confrontation with her father where he threatens to evict Irma from her home and follows this with physically abusing Aggie, Irma realizes that she can no longer put up with his behaviour and decides to make a bid for freedom. Taking Aggie with her and also her baby sister, Irma manages to escape to Mexico City where she feels they will all be safe. But Irma gradually comes to the realization that you cannot escape your past and that to move forward there are some things that must be faced and dealt with.

Miriam Toews is, I understand, one of Canada's most celebrated writers; she is also an actress and I would imagine that she has used her experience in the film industry to inform her writing for the first part of this novel; but it was not the first part of the novel that I found the most interesting - it was the second part where Irma struggled to cope with a difficult teenager and a very small baby in a strange city, which was more involving - if not entirely convincing. I found this book a little difficult to rate fairly as I had mixed feelings towards it; it's fresh, quirky, drily humorous and, in some ways, quite compelling, but I can appreciate that not everyone will find this a satisfying read. A friend, who was eager to read this immediately I had finished it, commented that the style of writing was difficult to 'get into', she found the first part of the story slow and she found the short sentences and lack of proper punctuation made for a confusing read. I do understand her reservations but I found that once I had acclimatized to Toews style of writing, this book made for an interesting, original and quite poignant, if not wholly convincing read.

3.5 Stars