Irma Voth

May 9, 2011
Toews's (A Complicated Kindness) story unfolds in a remote Mennonite outpost in Mexico, where the strictly observant cross paths with the narcos, creating an uncomfortable cultural mix of Spanish, English, and Low German. Nineteen-year-old Irma tells of her own alienation from the Mennonites after marrying a young Mexican man. Though she still lives near her family, her patriarchal father has ordered her shunned (her spirited little sister, however, continues to visit, half-angry, half-longing for brief contact). After a quick wedding, Irma's husband is rarely home, and Irma is lonely until an eccentric crew of filmmakers arrives to make a movie set among the Mennonites. Irma works as a translator and finds much in common with these artists and lost souls. But her father holds an overblown hatred of the filmmakers, believing them evil. When his menacing opposition begins to threaten the filmâand her sister's safetyâIrma, ennobled by her experience on the production, makes a radical choice that will greatly affect her family. With her fifth novel, Toews, who was born into a Mennonite community in Canada, combines an intimate coming-of-age tale with picaresque and extremely effective prose.

September 1, 2011

An unworldly Mennonite girl with a tainted past considers a life without the direction of her father, her husband or God, then implements it, in the latest from Canadian writer Toews (The Flying Troutmans, 2008, etc.).

Nineteen-year-old Irma is already breaking away from her Mennonite community in Mexico as the novel opens. Her marriage to Jorge, who is involved in the drug trade, has brought down the wrath of her dictatorial father, and the family chasm only deepens when a film crew arrives and Irma starts working for them as a translator. Irma's voice—minimal, introverted, bewildered—lends poetic intensity, softened by a tragi-comic edge, to the initially slow-moving story. As tensions rise between the bohemian film crew and the rigid religious community and her marriage disintegrates, Irma plans her escape, accompanied by her 13-year-old sister and, then, at her mother's behest, the new baby. Now the narrative springs to life as the girls exchange austerity for freedom and friendship in Mexico City, where students help them to settle. Pleasure and creativity enliven them, but past deeds must still be reconciled, a task which Irma eventually begins to tackle.

A literary novel marked by charm, wit and an original approach to language, weakened by polarized characters and a shift from gritty to soft-centered.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

August 1, 2011
Toews' unique voice shines in her fifth novela simultaneously poignant and humorous tale of a young Mennonite woman breaking out of her suffocating cocoon. When Irma Voth was 13, her father brought her family from Canada to a Mexican Mennonite community, where she still lives. Irma's father disowned her when she married Jorge, who dabbles in drug smuggling and is abusive and frequently absent. Her prospects dramatically improve when a film crew from Mexico City arrives, hoping to make a movie about her community. Irma is hired as a translator, and her world suddenly expands as Diego, the director, teaches her about the creative process, and his leading actress spouts philosophy in her off-hoursstrange ideas that Irma soaks up like a sponge. But her father disapproves of the filthy pornography-producing crew and puts a bounty on Diego's head. Toews perfectly captures this young woman's attempt to find her niche in a world so different from that in which she was raised as she leaves her family behind, filled with hope and certain that her future can only be better.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)