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A memoir about family and futility

- BY ANTHONY MILTON

A Truce That Is Not Peace Out August 26

BOOK Miriam Toews grew up in a small Mennonite community in Steinbach, Manitoba, a setting that has coloured many of her novels, including A Complicated Kindness, All My Puny Sorrows and Women Talking, which was adapted into an Oscar-winning film by Sarah Polley in 2022. But Toews’s latest book, A Truce That Is Not Peace, is her first true memoir. Beginning with a deceptively simple question—Why do I write?—the author casts herself back to her childhood and recalls memories of her father and sister, who both died by suicide. These recollections are interspersed with contemporary scenes from the writer’s family life, which unfolds around the west-end Toronto home she shares with her partner, mother, daughter, son-in-law and grandkids. We spoke to Toews about the futility of writing, the oppressiveness of her hometown and the joys of a matriarchal household.

First things first: what prompted you to write A Truce That Is Not Peace?

I started it about a year and a half ago. I was in a period of reflection, wrestling with the question, Why do I write? I was struggling with it. I tend to find out why I wrote something after the fact. Writing itself always seems futile. How could I possibly choose the right words to describe a feeling? But, knowing myself, I had to try. A friend of mine once described this book as building a wall and tearing it down at the same time.

That sounds surprisingly pessimistic coming from such a successful writer.