About this item
Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfriedas life is enviable shes a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, and happily married and Yolandis a mess shes divorced and broke, with two teenagers growing up too quickly, they are fiercely close raised in a Mennonite household and sharing the hardship of Elfs desire to end her life. After Elfs latest attempt, Yoli must quickly determine how to keep her family from falling apart, how to keep her own heart from breaking, and what it means to love someone who wants to die. All My Puny Sorrows is the latest novel from Miriam Toews, one of Canadas most beloved authors not only because her work is rich with deep human feeling and compassion but because her observations are knife-sharp and her books wickedly funny.
About the Author
Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer of Mennonite descent. She grew up in Steinbach, Manitoba and has lived in Montreal and London, before settling in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Toews studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of King's College in Halifax, and has also worked as a freelance newspaper and radio journalist. Her non-fiction book "Swing Low: A Life" was a memoir of her father, a victim of lifelong depression. Her 2004 novel "A Complicated Kindness" was her breakthrough work, spending over a year on the Canadian bestseller lists and winning the Governor General's Award for English Fiction. The novel, about a teenage girl who longs to escape her small Russian Mennonite town and hang out with Lou Reed in the slums of New York City, was also nominated for the Giller Prize and was the winning title in the 2006 edition of Canada Reads. A series of letters she wrote in 2000 to the father of her son were published on the website and were profiled on the radio show This American Life in an episode about missing parents. In 2007 she made her screen debut in the Mexican film "Luz silenciosa" directed by Carlos Reygadas, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival. In Sept. 2008, Knopf Canada published her novel "The Flying Troutmans", about a 28-year-old woman from Manitoba who takes her 15-year-old nephew and 11-year-old niece on a road trip to California after their mentally ill mother has been hospitalized. The book, was released in April 2011. Her latest book, was published in April 2014. For more information see The following is an interesting article written by Miriam Toews:
