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Title details for Women Talking by Miriam Toews - Available

Women Talking

by Miriam Toews
Matthew Edison
Audiobook
9 of 11 copies available
Borrow Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
9 of 11 copies available
A FINALIST FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD: A transformative and necessary work—as completely unexpected as it is inspired—by the award-winning author of the bestselling novels All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness.
The sun rises on a quiet June morning in 2009. August Epp sits alone in the hayloft of a barn, anxiously bent over his notebook. He writes quickly, aware that his solitude will soon be broken. Eight women—ordinary grandmothers, mothers and teenagers; yet to August, each one extraordinary— will climb the ladder into the loft, and the day's true task will begin. This task will be both simple and subversive: August, like the women, is a traditional Mennonite, and he has been asked to record a secret conversation.
Thus begins Miriam Toews' spellbinding novel. Gradually, as we hear the women's vivid voices console, tease, admonish, regale and debate each other, we piece together the reason for the gathering: they have forty-eight hours to make a life-altering choice on behalf of all the women and children in the colony. And like a vast night sky coming into view behind the bright sparks of their voices, we learn of the devastating events that have led to this moment.
Acerbic, funny, tender, sorrowful and wise, Women Talking is composed of equal parts humane love and deep anger. It is award-winning writer Miriam Toews' most astonishing novel to date, containing within its two short days and hayloft setting an expansive, timeless universe of thinking and feeling about women—and men—in our contemporary world.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 21, 2018

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780735277274
      • File size: 171577 KB
      • Duration: 05:57:27

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This audiobook offers something unexpected: a story about women, narrated by a man. A colony of Mennonite women who have been assaulted by male colonists must decide how to respond. They come together in a meeting at which minutes are being taken by a man named August Epp. Portraying the eight female characters with seeming ease, narrator Matthew Edison makes the most of a richly layered story about repressed women's choices--which are starkly illuminated even as their conversation and quarrels are reduced to a man's notes. Edison's reserved tone belies the weight of the story's issues of guilt, sin, and propriety. But the themes of patriarchy and religion are heady--so his mildness is appreciated. M.P.P. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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