Lives Lived, Lives Imagined
Lives Lived, Lives Imagined
Ashley Raskovsky
, Marilyn Stanley
, diana kirkwood
, Joe Mitchell
, Barry Kazimer
, Jude Castillo
, Jennifer Beyak
, Deb Philippon
, Christopher Rossignol
, Natasa Ilic
, Hoda Montazeri
, Andrea Pole
, Margo Beredjiklian
, Karen Nordrum
, Julie Kaniak
, Sarah Schwartz
, Linda Leitch
, Janet Miller
, Andrea Gillespie
, Beth Duff
, Hilary Squires
, LJ Law
, Donna Courteau
, Liz Woloski
, Corinna Misson
, Marilyn Thomson
, Beth Dekoker
, Noelle Walsh
, PATRICIA SOPEL
, Mary Therrien
, Kevin Smith
, Dani Kat
, Laurène Boutin
, Judy Crowhurst
, Wanda Taylor
, Patricia Simpson
, Chris Carvalho
, Laurel Beyer
, Susan Baues
, Melissa Poremba
, Alissa Bender
, jane luce
, BJ Underwood
, Darlene Foster
, Sandra Storey
, Janet Meisner
, Margaret Jones
, Benita Hartwell
, Carl Scott
, Kim Cappellina
, Donald Forsythe
, Margaret McKay
, Randi Ann Doll
, Beth Follett
, Rosa Cross
, Rodney Cross
, Sheena Camwron
, maria blanco
, Pamela Roberts Griffith
, Ken Gilmour
, Yolande Thivierge
, Linda MacIntyre
, Paula Ritchie
, Patricia Johnson
, Elle Andra-Warner
, Anndee Newson
, PETER TASSIOPOULOS
editor@49thShelf.com
Perceptive, controversial, topical, and achingly funny, Miriam Toews’s books have earned her a place at the forefront of Canadian literature. In this first monograph on Toews’s work, Sabrina Reed examines the interplay of trauma and resilience in the author’s fiction. Reed skillfully demonstrates how Toews situates resilience across key themes, including: the home as both a source of trauma and an inspiration for resilient action; the road trip as a search for resolution and redemption; and the reframing of the Mennonite diaspora as an escape from patriarchal oppression. The deaths by suicide of Toews’s father and sister stand out as the most shocking and tragic of the author’s biographical details, and Reed explores Toews’s use of autofiction as a reparative gesture in the face of this trauma. Written in an accessible style that will appeal to both scholars and devotees of Toews’s work, Lives Lived, Lives Imagined is a timely examination of Toews’s oeuvre and a celebration of fiction’s ability to simultaneously embody compassion and anger, joy and sadness, and to brave the personal and communal oppressions of politics, religion, family, society, and mental illness.
