Women Talking by Miriam Toews

 

Summary (from the publisher): One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.

While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women—all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in—have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they’ve ever known or should they dare to escape?

Based on real events and told through the “minutes” of the women’s all-female symposium, Toews’s masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide.

Review: This book is the account of a single conversation that eight Mennonite women have during a secret meeting in a hay loft. Over the past few years, each of these women and many more in their community were drugged and raped in their beds at night. While they were told these happenings were the result of demons coming to punish them for their sins, it was actually the vile actions of men in their own community. Now, they meet to discuss what they should do next. Illiterate with no education, training, or resources, they must decide whether to stay or go, to forgive or to hold the perpetrators accountable. 

The novel is told from the perspective of August Epp, because he is the only man the women trust to take minutes on their meeting. August has his own dark history with the community and has been wronged in other ways so sympathizes with the women's plight. Yet I found August as narrator deeply problematic and jarring. It was absolutely shocking to me that the author chose to fictionalize this true story of women cruelly abused by men and give all the voice and power to a man. There are so many female characters that it is hard to keep them straight. August is by far the dominant voice and his story is the prominent. Rather than simple notetaking, August inserts asides and opinions throughout the narrative, which I found insulting to the women and their deliberations. If Toews' intent was to further show the male repression of the women in this community she certainly did that because otherwise I have nothing positive to comment about this choice.

Further and perhaps more problematic for a work of fiction, this novel lacked a true narrative arc. Yes, the women are deliberating their next step so I suppose you could argue the buildup is to that decision. But in the most meaningful sense, the action of this novel happens before the book starts, when the women are being violated. Toews decided to write about the debriefing of an event rather than about an event. The title is an apt description because that is literally all that takes place in this book. It was dull. 

It is absolutely horrifying that this novel is based on a true story. To add insult to injury, Toews has done these women an injustice with this book, which I found full of poor choices. Despite being a short work, I struggled to finish this and only did so because I wanted to be sure to write a review. 

Stars: 2