Irma Voth by Miriam Toews

I was rejoicing silently in my heart. I had asked a good question. And not only had I finally asked a good question, I had asked a good question of someone I was trying to be friends with as opposed to myself. A question that had breath attached to it, that had left my own body. Jorge told me not to ask questions, he hated them, he could always tell when I was about to ask one and he'd put his hand up and say no, please. Please. Was I betraying Jorge by asking a good question of Wilson?

Mennonite Irma Voth had been kicked out of her home by her father when she fell in love with and married a Mexican man named Jorge. Her father arranged for them to stay in a nearby house, but Jorge was to work for him for free. A year later though, Jorge is tired of Irma and the whole arrangement and leaves. Around the same time, a film crew moves into another house nearby to shoot a movie about Mennonites. Irma's father isn't happy about it, and is especially angry when Irma herself chooses to work for the film director. Soon, Irma's sister Aggie has also left home and wants to stay with Irma. One thing leads to another and Irma's father decides that Irma has to move out of her house and find her own stay. But Irma decides enough is enough and flees her home along with her sister, and tries to manage this new independent life.

I first read a Miriam Toews book - The Flying Troutmans - couple of years ago. That book dealt with a dysfunctional family, which was beginning to fall apart. There were elements of loneliness, sadness, family bonding and escapism lacing the book, and yet despite the heavy issues, the book was a quick read and funny at times. I don't remember feeling the urge to cry as I was reading the book, instead I felt a kind of closeness with the characters - the closeness you feel when you identify with the characters because they remind you of yourself when you hit the doldrums or felt aimless at any point in life. It was the kind of quirky sadness that everyone hits at some point - not a despairing sadness but more the-need-to-reconnect-with-self kind of sadness.

Irma Voth has the same elements. Although it's been two years since I read The Flying Troutmans, I could quickly see similarities between the two books. Both stories are as different as can be, but both tackle the same basic questions of a person's tendency towards flight in difficult situations, and how family can both be the bond holding them together and the wedge driving them apart. The characters are as usual dysfunctional and very human. Although Irma is the protagonist and the narrator, most of the secondary characters are well fleshed and lend their dynamic presence to the book. The Mennonite beliefs and ways of life was another big presence in this book. Although I was new to this denomination and reluctant to read anything with a huge religious element in it, I loved how easily and sometimes-hilariously Miriam Toews (a Mennonite herself) painted a vivid picture of the people of this faith.

As with The Flying Troutmans, I loved several of the characters that pass through the book - there are Irma and Aggie themselves, sisters, trusting each other, and yet always arguing with each other. There is the Russian-origin German actress, Marijke, who has her own huge baggage of issues that she drags all the way to the Mexican town, where the film crew is staying. The director, Diego, alternates between enthusiasm for shooting the movie and frustration at all the inevitable issues that crop up, both within the crew and from outside. When Irma works as the translator between Diego and Marijke, she easily feeds her own hilarious lines for Marijke to speak at each shoot. Then there are a whole host of minor characters - each one quirky enough during their brief appearances and whole enough to make those brief appearances memorable.

The second half of the book is set in an entirely different setting from the first. While the first half focused on the film crew, which served as the backdrop against which Irma’s family's dynamics played out, the second half was set in Mexico City, where Irma and her two sisters try to make their life work, away from their parents. Although Irma’s father is shown mostly as an adamant, over-protective and strongly principled man in the first half, we begin to see other shades of his personality in the latter half, through Irma’s eyes. Since Irma is rarely honest with herself and doesn't discuss what is bothering her, it takes a while before the reader catches on. There's a very ohmygodly bomb dropped in the second half that I never saw coming and made me feel overwhelmingly sad.

In classic Miriam Toews' style, the prose is quick and easy to read. Even though there is a lot of sadness and humor, the author doesn't infuse those sentiments heavily into her writing. The feelings of the characters are never discussed - the book is a first-person account written from the perspective of Irma, and yet, Irma rarely ever says if she is feeling happy or sad due to something. She only talks of what she is doing, or what someone else is doing - people's emotions aren't the principal focus. Miriam lets the characters' actions demonstrate the inner state of their minds. This is an interesting mode of writing because a character's behavior can be interpreted in so many ways or can be too complicated for a reader to analyze in the few seconds he/she reads that passage, but this works wonderfully here because there is no ambiguity in the meanings of what any character does.

Irma Voth is just as much a favorite of mine now as The Flying Troutmans is. Before starting this read, I was somewhat worried about how much this book will measure up to the successful image the other book has formed in my mind. But when I started and eventually finished it, I was thrilled that this book worked. It felt like revisiting an old favorite - and this has made me eager to check out her other books, and especially the book she wrote about her father, Swing Low.

I received this book for free for review from the publisher via TLC Book Tours.