by Miriam Toews
There is a chicken on the front cover of this novel, and an axe hovering threateningly in the upper corner. The relevance of these objects is explained early on - as an adolescent Mennonite girl in a closed community, our first-person narrator Nomi (a childish version of Naomi) has few options for h...
I appreciated this book much more on re-read (it's hard to pick a fave of hers - but at least I now have all three that I've read so far clearly in my mind). I am still slightly more impressed with the two that followed, The Flying Troutmans and Irma Voth, but it's only because ... because ... why?...
3.5 The .5 is for the ending. I liked it and would read more by her but didn't love it. I think this is going to be my last book of 2011.
3.5 The .5 is for the ending. I liked it and would read more by her but didn't love it. I think this is going to be my last book of 2011.
It wasn't the story that necessarily captivated me, but how it brought me back to my own years as a teenager in Manitoba. Things I had forgotten: Reach for the Top, Hymn Sing, and memories faint: bobbing bird, Irish Rovers, Farrah hair with heavy base. Many thanks to the author; it was a good trip h...
My friend Stefanie (who recommended the book) and I share a love of reading but rarely do our Venn diagrams overlap except when it comes to novels about alienated, mixed-up teens.Nomi Nickel joins Daniel Handler's Flannery Culp (The Basic Eight) as one of my favorite characters. Like Flan, Nomi is a...
I always fall in love with Toews's characters, in this case it's Nomi, a rebellious Mennonite teenager with a dry sense of humor whose family and home furnishings keep disappearing. Nomi lives in the "world's most non-progressive community", East Village, a small deeply religious town in Canada tha...
Weird. Weird. Weird. There were lots of moments that made me laugh out loud but, on the whole, it was a little strange. It's the story of 16 year old Nomi who lives, and rebels, in a Mennonite town. Her writing style is interesting enough that I might try another of her books. Maybe it was jus...
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