All My Puny Sorrows

All My Puny Sorrows (2014)
By Miriam Toews

Sometimes it's good to know absolutely nothing about a book before you read it. I'm pretty sure that I would've avoided this book like the plague if I'd realised what it was about - if you were to summarise the plot of All My Puny Sorrows, it wouldn't sound like a particularly entertaining read.

All My Puny Sorrows is the story of Yoli (a dishevelled, twice-divorced and financially struggling writer with two teenaged kids) and her sister Elfrieda (gorgeous and wealthy, a successful concert pianist in a happy and stable marriage). Having grown up as misfits in a conservative Mennonite community, Elf and Yoli may be dissimilar but they're close and become even closer as Yoli stands by her sister through Elf's consistent and repeated suicide attempts. You see, despite her fabulous life, Elf just wants to die and there seems to be nothing her family can say or do that will change her mind. Through suicide attempts including wrist-slashing, bleach-drinking, starvation and pills, Yoli refuses to give up and dedicates herself to trying to save Elf's life. This is not a cheery story. This is not something I would've chosen to read, but I'm so very glad that I did.

I wasn't exactly sure what a Mennonite was, so I googled it. Apparently these are Mennonites.

This book should be awful and dark and depressing. Elf wants nothing but to die - she is hopelessly depressed and Yoli cannot seem to help or to understand, despite her best efforts. As Yoli puts it, "Can't you just be like the rest of us, normal and sad and fucked up and alive and remorseful?". Yoli is desperate to save her sister and Elf is just desperate to die. It's an awful situation, made even worse when you learn that author Miriam Toews wrote All My Puny Sorrows as a deeply personal story following the suicides of her own father and sister. But somehow, All My Puny Sorrows is joyful.
It's sweet and likeable and even laugh-out-loud funny at times.

All My Puny Sorrows is incredibly well-written. Both Elf and Yoli (as well as the many and varied members of their family) are such wonderfully written characters that they're inherently believable and understandable. Miriam Toews writes about the relationship between the two sisters with such insight and sensitivity that you empathise with both of them - Yoli's desperation to show Elf that life is worthwhile, but also Elf's need to have Yoli understand her death wish. It's truly remarkable.

The title comes from a Coleridge poem: "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"

At one point, the sisters' mother complains about a book she's reading: "Okay, she's sad! We get it, we know what sad is, and then the whole book is basically a description of the million and one ways in which our protagonist is sad. Gimme a break! Get on with it!". This is exactly what makes All My Puny Sorrows so good - one of the main characters is irredeemably sad but the book itself isn't really about that. It's also about all the other aspects of the characters' lives and the intricacies and joys of their relationships.

It's a beautifully written story that raises some very deep questions with compassion and a light touch. Highly recommended.

9/10