Swing Low

Well, it won’t come as a surprise, based on a number of blogs below that mention her name: but I’m completely in love with Miriam Toews. In fact, in the past month I’ve read two of her four books. And those come only a month or two after I finished her book A Complicated Kindness, which won the Governor General Award, and was a finalist for the Giller. Plus, if I remember correctly, it was selected as one of the books for the CBC’s Canada Reads. (Yes, yes, it was. In 2006. I just googled it. Oh, I love technology at my fingertips!) So, if my simple math serves me correctly (which yes, believe it or not, I can add 3 + 1) I only have one more of her books to read, which will be A Summer of Amazing Luck.

I finished Swing Low last night, while sitting under the stars, listening to Eric Burdon and the Animals at Festival of Friends, in Hamilton. It was sopping wet and sticky, after a woman decided it would be in her best interest to pick up my chair and move it, spilling my coffee all over my perfectly kept book. She clearly didn’t understand the joys of keeping a book in perfect condition!

Swing Low was different than most other things I have read before. It was sweet and funny, though it dealt with the melancholic subject of suicide and manic depression. What was interesting, was that it was a true story — a memoir of sorts — about Miriam Toew’s father, who had knelt in front of the train tracks and killed himself. However, she did not write it from the perspective of a grieving child, rather she used his obsessive collection of notes and the “family file,” that he kept, to gather his thoughts, and attempt to write his story, from his perspective.

So, now it's time to crack the one Miriam Toew's novel that I have yet to read. But I think I might wait awhile. Her next book isn't set to come out until December, so I'll save this one to bridge the gap in a month or two.