Miriam Toews

I just finished reading three Miriam Toews books back-to-back. What wit!

I share two excerpts from A Complicated Kindness:

Went home. Came down. Got sad. There was a note on the kitchen table. Nomi: Any plans for after graduation? That's how we communicated large, vague ideas. On paper that can burn up in less than one second. I stared at the words for an exorbitantly long time. Then I wrote. Dear Dad: I intend to become a model of courage and dignity.


When I was ten Tash took me swimming in the pits and we had this little dinghy with a rope around it and we were diving off it and after this one dive I got my foot stuck in the rope and I couldn't get it out and I thought I was going to drown and Tash hadn't noticed until the last possible second when all my air was gone and then I felt her hand on my foot and the rope being moved and I burst to the surface and then into tears. Later that day I realized that I could have died and I decided it was time to create some type of legacy so I asked my dad what people would sooner remember, the things I said or the things I didn't say. His response was: Forgive me, but what people?


My kind of humor.