Background Information on A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

The author of A Complicated Kindness, Miriam Toews, grew up in the small Mennonite town of Steinbach Manitoba.Toews went to the University of Manitoba where she earned a BA in Film Studies, and the University of King's College in Halifax. She has previously worked as a freelance newspaper and radio journalist. Her novel, A Complicated Kindness was her breakthrough. It won the Governor General's award for English fiction and was on the Canadian Bestseller list for over a year.

The novel’s fictitious town, isolated and conservatively religious, East Village was based on Toews’ hometown, Steinbach. With A Complicated Kindness, Toews expresses messages of love, life, and the importance of staying true to oneself. She wants to make known “the complex and innocent humanity inside each of us that is too often shaped by human tragedy”, as said by Lisa Nuch Venbrux.

A review by The Token Book Review, explains their observations of the reasons for Miriam Toews’ decision to intertwine Nomi’s past events with those of the present to complete the novel’s plot development: “When the book ends, it is like a revelation. You realize that the slow accumulation of small stories and details has been woven together into a beautiful, full narrative and you are rooting for Nomi - her punk-ass intolerance for [B.S.], her brutal honesty, and her wicked humour.”

The Mennonite community in this novel is portrayed as extremely pious and strict. Toews’ views on this religious sect are obviously not all so admirable. It is evident that Toews’ own Menno experiences have shaped the novel’s setting and a lengthy portion of the plot as well.



Quote sites used:

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/39594/complicated-kindness/

This article was written by Lisa Nuch Venbrux and expresses her views on the novel’s inner themes and messages.


http://www.happyrobot.net/reviews/Default.asp?feature_id=25&k=T&col=artist&id=1941

This article has no specified writer, though it does state the “ADINA System is the leading program for fully coupled analysis”. It states their views of the novel's use of flashback.