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Irma Voth$29.95 add to cart

Since the publication of her first novel, Summer of My Amazing Luck (Turnstone Press) in 1996, Miriam Toews has earned a reputation of writing some of the funniest books about some of the unfunniest subjects in contemporary literature: young women struggling as single parents, depression, family estrangement, abandonment, mental illness. In an interview that appeared in the September 2008 issue of Quill & Quire, she summed up one of the underlying attitudes that she brings to her work, "Life is funny and life is sad. Life is comic and life is tragic. It's a breeze and it's hell. It?s all of those things at once."

Toews' unique charm has fuelled an intense love affair with readers and critics alike. After the publication of Summer of my Amazing Luck, her work (which includes A Boy of Good Breeding, 1998; Swing Low, 2000; A Complicated Kindness, 2004; The Flying Troutmans, 2008) has consistently topped bestseller lists around the world and has won numerous awards, including The Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, The Rogers Writer's Trust Award for Fiction, The McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award, and the Canada Reads competition.

Toews grew up Mennonite in rural Manitoba. Collisions between a fervent religion and the sentiments of its more imaginative youth form themes that run through much of Toews' fiction.

In her new novel, Irma Voth (Hardcover. $29.95), Toews continues to explore these themes through the stifling, reclusive life of a nineteen-year-old young woman. Recently married and soon deserted, Irma finds her life is turned on its head when a film crew moves in to make a movie about her strict religious community. She is drawn to the creative passion and warmth of the film crew's world but her domineering father is determined to keep her from it. The confrontation between them sets her on an irrevocable path towards something that feels like freedom (it's complicated) as she and her young sister, Aggie, wise beyond her teenage years, flee to the big city, upheld only by their love for each other and their smart wit. (Knopf. April)

Although she now lives in Toronto, we still think of Miriam as our own. You can give her a big welcome back at the launch of Irma Voth at our Grant Park store on Sunday, May 1 at 2:30 pm, 2011.