Thou creepest round a dear-loved sister's bed
With noiseless step, and watchest the faint look,
Soothing each pang with fond solicitude,
And tenderest tones medicinal of love.
I, too, a sister had, an only sister —
She loved me dearly, and I doted on her;
To her I pour'd forth all my puny sorrows
With noiseless step, and watchest the faint look,
Soothing each pang with fond solicitude,
And tenderest tones medicinal of love.
I, too, a sister had, an only sister —
She loved me dearly, and I doted on her;
To her I pour'd forth all my puny sorrows
All My Puny Sorrows begins in the small town of East Village, Manitoba; a Mennonite community in which the church elders attempt to control every aspect of its citizens lives. The main character Yolanda (Yoli) and her big sister Elfrieda (Elf) are being raised by pious but free-thinking parents and their indulgences are the talk of the town, leading to a "raid" by the bishop:
He showed up on a Saturday in a convoy with his usual posse of elders, each in his own black, hard-topped car (they never carpool because it's not as effective in creating terror when thirteen or fourteen similarly dressed men tumble out of one car) and my father and I watched from the window as they parked in front of our house and got out of their cars and walked slowly towards us, one behind the other, like a tired conga line.The posse is there to discuss the troubling rumour that Elf might want to attend university one day (Public enemy number one for these men was a girl with a book) and before their cowed father can make a response, Elf plays a frantic and flawless Rachmaninoff piece on the contraband piano in the adjoining room and their father knew in that moment he had "lost everything": approval from the elders, his authority as head of the household, and his daughter, who was now free and therefore dangerous. Elf goes on to study piano with European masters and grows into a world famous artist; a person with everything: a satisfying career; a loving partner; a beautiful home; a supportive family; exotic beauty; and as shown in chapters that alternate with the childhood memories, a death wish.
Yoli, on the other hand, is a mildly successful author of YA rodeo novels, twice-divorced with a teenaged child by each marriage, living in a pest-infested apartment in Toronto, and sleeping around with men she's only weakly attracted to. Yoli must repeatedly drop everything and fly back to Winnipeg whenever Elf makes an attempt on her life, and more than anything, Yoli struggles to understand the why: why her sister -- who not only "has it all" but who also understands (because of their father) how devastating a suicide is for those left behind -- why would Elf be determined to kill herself? The conversations the sisters have around this issue are fascinating and devastating and lead to a discussion about going to Switzerland, where assisted suicide is legal even for those who have simply "lost the will to live". Would it be more compassionate to allow Elf to go out on her own terms? Or, if her depression could be controlled by the right mix of drugs, wouldn't Elf have an obligation to try every solution offered? This notion of control over one's own life was brilliantly juxtaposed against the controlling efforts of the Mennonite elders (even as a bishop intrudes unwanted upon Elf's hospital room and she can only force him to leave by stripping naked while reciting poetry at him).
Toews not only uses All My Puny Sorrows to explore and understand suicide, but she also uses it lay bare the subpar medical care that psych patients receive; as though an illness of the mind is more the fault of the patient than an illness of the body.
Imagine a psychiatrist sitting down with a broken human being saying, I am here for you. I am committed to your care, I want to make you feel better, I want to return your joy to you, I don't know how I will do it but I will find out and then I will apply one hundred per cent of my abilities, my training, my compassion and my curiosity to your health -- to your well-being, to your joy. I am here for you and I will work very hard to help you. I promise. If I fail it will be my failure, not yours. I am the expert. You are experiencing great pain right now and it is my job and my mission to cure you from your pain.That imaginary care is contrasted against what Elf actually receives: constant condescension and infantilising; not allowed meals or phone calls unless she makes the effort to go to another room to retrieve them; a doctor who refuses to even speak with her if she insists on communicating through written messages. (And perhaps worst of all: no continuity of care, so that doctors and nurses who don't know Elf's -- and Toews own sister's -- full history can be manipulated into issuing day passes.) Although there is much bitterness in these passages, Toews concludes on a lighter note:
Nurses in cardio are far more playful and friendly than they are in psych.And there are many lighter -- and even funny -- threads in this book as Toews weaves together a full and compassionate tapestry of this all-too-real and all-too-painful situation. The sisters' mother is a tour-de-force, and her sister even more so: this is, in many ways, the story of these women's triumph over the paternalistic Mennonite society (We descendants of the Girl Line may not have wealth and proper windows in our drafty homes but at least we have rage and we will build empires with that, gentlemen). For some reason that I don't remember, I didn't much like A Complicated Kindness and I may need to revisit it; the Toews I'm reading here is truly a masterful story-crafter. But I have a couple of quibbles: this book is littered with pop culture (The Wire, The Weepies, La Dolce Vita) and literary (Ezra Pound, Hemingway, Calvino) references, and with people reciting lines of poetry to each other, so that it felt too often that the story was detached; self-consciously filtered through a literary lens. Also, I appreciate the discussion of suicide as a valid life-choice (and am gratified that compassion has been publicly shown in the recent cases of a mental sufferer -- Robin Williams -- and a physical sufferer -- Brittany Maynard), but can't actually agree that a suicide isn't ultimately a selfish choice. **spoiler** I understand that Toews had the characters in her book commit suicide by crouching in front of an oncoming train because that's what her sister did in real life, but I think the effect on the drivers of those trains is unforgiveable. I can be convinced that a person has the right to control their own end only where no one else is scarred for life: you can't fling yourself from a tall building onto a public sidewalk; step into traffic; hang yourself in your livingroom for your children to find. I suppose this makes the case for the Swiss solution.
If you have to end up in the hospital, try to focus all your pain in your heart rather than in your head.
At one point, Yoli notes: My mother was often asked to write eulogies because she had a breezy style that was playful, good with details and totally knife-in-the-heart devastating. Those same characteristics apply to Toews and her writing style with All My Puny Sorrows; this is a masterwork and a fitting tribute to a lost sister.
All My Puny Sorrows was shortlisted for the both the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (which it won) and the Giller Prize (which it did not win). I am pleased that it won something; this book certainly deserves recognition and whatever bump in sales these honours might bring. This is the last of the big-prize-nominated books that I have to read (the one for which I was on the library waiting list for the longest) and it's a totally satisfying end to a long process for me. I may rethink this read-them-all project next year...
2014 Finalists for the Rogers
Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (with my personal ranking):
The longlist for the 2014 Scotiabank
Giller Prize (with my personal ranking):
