About Irma Voth
• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harper (September 6, 2011)
“The nicely drawn contrast between what Irma knows and suspects and what the reader understands about her world gives Irma Voth a suspenseful charge from the first pages.” —Jane Smiley, Globe and Mail (Toronto)
That rare coming-of-age story able to blend the dark with the uplifting, Irma Voth follows a young Mennonite woman, vulnerable yet wise beyond her years, who carries a terrible family secret with her on a remarkable journey to survival and redemption.
Nineteen-year-old Irma lives in a rural Mennonite community in Mexico. She has already been cast out of her family for marrying a young Mexican ne’er-do-well she barely knows, although she remains close to her rebellious younger sister and yearns for the lost intimacy with her mother. With a husband who proves elusive and often absent, a punishing father, and a faith in God damaged beyond repair, Irma appears trapped in an untenable and desperate situation. When a celebrated Mexican filmmaker and his crew arrive from Mexico City to make a movie about the insular community in which she was raised, Irma is immediately drawn to the outsiders and is soon hired as a translator on the set. But her father, intractable and domineering, is determined to destroy the film and get rid of the interlopers. His action sets Irma on an irrevocable path toward something that feels like freedom.
A novel of great humanity, written with dry wit, edgy humor, and emotional poignancy, Irma Voth is the powerful story of a young woman’s quest to discover all that she may become in the unexpectedly rich and confounding world that lies beyond the stifling, observant community she knows.
Bloggers who sign up for this tour will also get a copy of Toews’ Swing Low, should they so choose.
About Miriam Toews
Miriam Toews was born in the small Mennonite town of Steinbach, Manitoba. She has published five novels and a memoir of her father, and is the recipient of numerous literary awards in Canada, including the Governor General’s Literary Award (for A Complicated Kindness) and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize (for The Flying Troutmans). In 2010 she received the prestigious Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award for her body of work. Irma Voth is Toews’s most recent novel. She lives in Toronto.
Miriam’s Tour Stops
Tuesday, September 6th: Reading on a Rainy Day
Wednesday, September 7th: The Lost Entwife
Thursday, September 8th: Into the Hall of Books
Friday, September 9th: A Bookish Way of Life
Thursday, September 15th: Broken Teepee
Friday, September 16th: Chick Lit Reviews .com
Monday, September 19th: The Scarlet Letter
Wednesday, September 21st: Life is Short. Read Fast.
Thursday, September 22nd: Book Snob
Friday, September 23rd: The Betty and Book Chronicles
Monday, September 26th: Life in Review
Tuesday, September 27th: The Book Nest
Wednesday, September 28th: Nose in a Book
Thursday, September 29th: My Bookshelf
Monday, October 3rd: Stiletto Storytime
Saturday, October 8th: In the Next Room