These 'Women Talking' Build Their Own Faith And Future
Miriam Toews' new novel follows a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of horrific sexual assaults committed by the colony's men.
The Canadian writer Miriam Toews opens her astonishing eighth novel, , with a matter-of-fact Author's Note. Between 2005 and 2009, she explains, eight men in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia raped many of the girls and women in their community, first rendering them unconscious with cow anesthetic. is "both a reaction through fiction to these true-life events, and an act of female imagination." It is also a work of deep moral intelligence, a master class in ethics beautifully dressed as a novel. And,is narrated by a man.
