A Truce That Is Not Peace

by Miriam Toews

An astonishing masterwork of memoir from one of our most renowned and acclaimed writers, telling pieces of her own story in nonfiction for the first time.

“Why do you write?” the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempted answer from Toews—all of them unsatisfactory to the organizer—surfaces new layers of grief, guilt, and futility connected to her sister’s suicide. She has been keeping up, she realizes, a decades-old internal correspondence, filling a silence she barely understands. And we, her readers, come to see that the question is as impossible to answer as deciding whether to live life as a comedy or a tragedy.
Marking the first time Toews has written her own story in nonfiction, A Truce That Is Not Peace explores the uneasy pact every creative person makes with memory. Wildly inventive yet masterfully controlled; slyly casual yet momentous; wrenching and joyful; hilarious and humane—this is Miriam Toews at her dazzling best, remaking her world and inventing a brilliant literary form to contain it.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Canada, Audiobook, Biography Memoir, Biography, Mental Health

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2025

About the author

Miriam Toews is a Canadian writer of Mennonite descent. She grew up in Steinbach, Manitoba and has lived in Montreal and London, before settling in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Toews studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of King's College in Halifax, and has also worked as a freelance newspaper and radio journalist. Her non-fiction book "Swing Low: A Life" was a memoir of her father, a victim of lifelong depression. Her 2004 novel "A Complicated Kindness" was her breakthrough work, spending over a year on the Canadian bestseller lists and winning the Governor General's Award for English Fiction. The novel, about a teenage girl who longs to escape her small Russian Mennonite town and hang out with Lou Reed in the slums of New York City, was also nominated for the Giller Prize and was the winning title in the 2006 edition of Canada Reads.

A series of letters she wrote in 2000 to the father of her son were published on the website www.openletters.net and were profiled on the radio show This American Life in an episode about missing parents.

In 2007 she made her screen debut in the Mexican film "Luz silenciosa" directed by Carlos Reygadas, which screened at the Cannes Film Festival.

In Sept. 2008, Knopf Canada published her novel "The Flying Troutmans", about a 28-year-old woman from Manitoba who takes her 15-year-old nephew and 11-year-old niece on a road trip to California after their mentally ill mother has been hospitalized.

Irma Voth, was released in April 2011 and is a novel about a conservative Mennonite community in Mexico.

All My Pun Sorrows published in 2014 is a novel about two sisters in story that was inspired by Miriam Toews’ relationship with her sister who committed suicide.

Women Talking is a novel published in 2018 and is inspired by historical events that took place between 2005 and 2009 on a remote Mennonite community in Bolivia. A film adaptation of the book was released in late 2022. The movie won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Fight Night published in 2021 is a novel that focuses on a multigenerational family of women living in Toronto and features the relationship between the grandmother and grand daughter on a trip to California.

A Truce That Is Not Peace published in 2025 is nonfiction memoir.

Reviews

[CarolG · Rating 3 out of 5]

The only book by Miriam Toews that I've read (actually listened to) is "Women Talking" but I thought this memoir would be interesting. And it was. A very unusual presentation in that it's not linear but bounces all over, back and forth from the past to more recent times, consisting of remembrances, correspondence, quotes, etc. At first, I was like ????, but as I got used to the format I started to enjoy it more. She's certainly had some traumatic occurrences in her life but she has a great sense of humour and I'm really impressed by how much she loves her grandchildren. Her desire to create a wind museum is something totally different but tongue-in-cheek I imagine. Who knew there were so many different types of wind in the world?! Near the end of the book she mentions her mother's trigeminal neuralgia. This is an extremely painful disorder my sister suffered from years ago for which she underwent surgery. I've never heard it mentioned anywhere else until now. As fascinated as I was, I'm a total outlier and couldn't give the book any more than 3 stars. I'd be interested in reading some of the novels in her catalogue if I can find the time. Another Canadian author to be proud of!

Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada|Knopf Canada via Netgalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this memoir in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.
Publication Date: August 26, 2025

[Wendy Greenberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

My experience of reading Toews' fiction is that it flouts convention. This is why I love her work. This memoir is similarly off-script.

She is asked (with other writers) to produce a piece for a conference on "Why do you Write". Her responses play out through this memoir. None of them fit the conference brief. This is exactly the point, my opinion is that writers respond to life in a million ways and cannot be boxed into what is expected and this is the joy of reading.

Toews' life bleeds into her fiction so this work is not unexpected. She was brought up in a Mennonite community and inevitably the suicide of her sister and the long silences in her family colour her world. The narrative is episodic, back and forth (non-linear) through life's happenings and her contemporary and reflected emotions.

Her skill in balancing deep trauma with humour is extraordinary. The layering of her life is compulsive and I found it revealed itself in much of the way that we all get to know people, superficial to in-depth in fits and starts.

I loved this. I love that she does not conform and for myself I find that Toews' response to "Why Do You write" is just perfect. Works for me.

With thanks to #NetGalley and #4thestatebooks for the opportunity to read and review

[Emma Griffioen]

A memoir (my favourite genre) by my favourite author? This is the best news ever. Netgalley better pull through with the ARC. 😭🤞🏻

Her books were #1 on my top 10 the past 2 years, I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being my favourite book of 2025.

[Dona's Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pre-Read Notes:

I'm really not sure how I'm supposed to resist any story with this title! This was an arc that got away. This happens when I receive a copy from publishers that is not accessible. When this happens, I most often need to wait for the book to come out, and then I find an accessible copy on Libby, if I can. That's what I did here.

"My six-year-old granddaughter, visiting from Winnipeg, makes me a pair of wings and tapes them onto my back. I forget they are there and wear them all day, flying to the Metro, to the passport office, to the Shoppers Drug Mart." p78

Final Review

(thoughts & recs) Humans are such resilient little systems. Stories about people rebounding from life's tragedies make me feel complex things, which is why I love memoirs. I thought this one was special because it's form was so subversive, creative, and mesmerizing. This book is *stuffed* with breaks-- line breaks, page breaks, heading breaks, chapter breaks. This is as much a story about what comes in between the words that make us as it is about the words, or us, alone.

I would not say this is an easy read but I did not find it nearly as perplexing as some other reader reviews have suggested. But do understand going in that this narrative is not linear. Try to relax into the idea that you are being handed tiny strips of a story that can be put together a thousand different ways. It's about family, from the tiny isolated position of the self. It takes this form because Toews is trying to answer the deceptively simple question-- "why do I write?" And for her, the answer is about plumbing her personal history for the good stuff.

I recommend this one to fans of experimental form, subversive use of language, and possibly for memoir fans. Expect a more lyrical approach rather than narrative.

My 3 Favorite Things:

✔️ "your mom said not to be angry because Tommy’s dad drank a lot of beer and sometimes chased Tommy around the house with a knife, and you should only forgive him and love him. Do you remember trying so hard to forgive him and love him? You prayed to God to help you, but every time you closed your eyes you imagined Tommy’s dad getting drunk and chasing him around the house with the knife and catching him and stabbing him. Stabbing him. Many, many times. Over and over and over." p31

✔️ This memoir was written in response to a prompt-- Why do you write? --and explores the distinctive answers to the many ways to read that question. It's clever, creative, beautiful, and interesting.

✔️ "My mother was old, eighty-five, with a bad heart, and all she could really do to help was hold the baby and sing lullabies in her ancient language—which, if you think about it, is a lot. It’s almost everything." p80 This is so true, isn't it? Grandmas *are* everything. And if you're lucky, her song remains with you long after she's gone.

✔️ "I walked for miles on the river, feeling embarrassed about everything, specifically about writing, about being a person who moved words around, trying to make something. I mean, it was all so embarrassing, [...being] a useless daughter who got exasperated trying to take care of her old mother and was afflicted with this need to write things down." p83 I relate. I wish I had been built for business, not creating things!

✔️ It gets like this as we get older. "I think about my mother at her cardiologist’s office, how she and the doctor joke, hold hands, talk about her ticker, her imminent death, laugh." p169

✔️ "The children’s fiat! We are patched!" p171 Beautiful insight into the precedence of harm humans experience that goes on to define their relationships with themselves.

Content Notes: extreme cold, death of a parent, grief, loneliness

Thank you to Miriam Toews, Bloomsbury Publishing, and NetGalley for an advance digital copy of A TRUCE THAT IS NOT PEACE. I found an accessible copy in Libby, thus the late review. All views are mine.

[theliterateleprechaun]

What did I just read .... or TRY to read?! 😤

[Clif Hostetler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is memoir in the form of chain-of-recollection (a version of chain of consciousness) with no discernible attention given to chronological order, although date of writing is given for most segments. The book begins with reference to an invitation received for a planned writers event to which she is asked to submit an essay on "Why Do I Write?" Later in the book the mention is made of objections from the organizers of this planned event saying that she has not addressed the subject correctly. The requested subject is not, "Why I Began To Write." Still later in the book she's told again that her submittal is still not on topic.

Miriam Toews at no point in the book explicitly states why she writes. However, I as a reader upon completion of the book believe that I know why—to stay alive. Toews' writing began as a teenager in the early 80s when her older sister, hospitalized with suicidal thoughts, asked Miriam to write letters to her during her travels around Europe with a boyfriend. Thus, her writing career began as letters written in an effort to keep her sister alive. Suicide was a real and present possibility in their family because their father had committed suicide. Ultimately her sister did kill herself in the same way and at the same location as was done by their father. This book makes random references to suicide, however some of the details I've shared in the previous sentence are known to me because I've read other books by Miriam Toews. Some portions of this book are letters written to her sister in 1982, and additional letters are included which Miriam has continued to write to her sister after her death.

The book's narrative wonders around various everyday types of subjects and events involving mother, father, sister, children, grandchildren, ex-husband, and ex-boyfriends. The stories generally involve recalling events from the past. She writes with a spirit of humor and nonchalance, but the trauma of her past lingers through the stories as a heavy cloud of gravitas and poignancy. When one is writing to stay alive, what will one do if there's nothing more to write about?

The following are some excerpts that caught my attention.

This first excerpt is taken from a story from her youth of her family returning from a picnic in a boat that is apparently leaking water. The vignette impresses me as a metaphor of Miriam's life:

We pile into the boat and drift away from the island. I'm bailing to beat the band, as my father would have said. Our little boat has taken on water, and I use my hands, a chipped bowl, a tin cup, and a half-empty peanut butter jar while my sister sits serenely, silently, in the prow of the sinking boat. We're going home. We're hoping to make it. We're writing. We're bailing, we're flailing, we're sucking air, hollering into the wind. Help, we're sinking, we're writing, we're bailing, we're silent. We've made a decision. We're content. We're sitting calmly in the prow of the little boat that is definitely taking on more water now, more than before. We are not bailing. We're trying to go home. We're all trying to get home.

This next excerpt indicates the origin of the book's title. It is taken from the poem "The Limit" by Christian Wiman:

And yet I’ve come to believe, and in rare moments can almost feel, that like an illness some vestige of which the body keeps to protect itself, pain may be its own reprieve; that the violence that is latent within us may be, if never altogether dispelled or tamed, at least acknowledged, defined, and perhaps by dint of the love we feel for our lives, for the people in them and for our work, rendered into an energy that need not be inflicted on others or ourselves, an energy we may even be able to use; and that for those of us who have gone to war with our own minds there is yet hope for what Freud called “normal unhappiness,” wherein we might remember the dead without being haunted by them, give to our lives a coherence that is not “closure,” and learn to live with our memories, our families, and ourselves amid a truce that is not peace.

This is another quotation from Wiman that is referenced in this book:

It can be a relief to release one’s hold on singularity for the sake of a binding truth, even if the truth is only that there can be no such thing. If we can’t salvage the bits of memory and matter that have made us what we are, let us at least acknowledge the whirlwind.

In this book Miriam Toews has acknowledged the whirlwind.

Link to The Atlantic article about this book:
https://www.theatlantic.com/books/arc...

Link to a NY Times review of this book:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/bo...

Link to The Paris Review article by Toews (A long excerpt from this book)
https://www.theparisreview.org/fictio...

Link to a list of ten books by Miriam Toews, all of which I have read and written reviews.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

[Amy Imogene Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Morbid, hilarious, somber, reflective, startling, honey-slow, non-linear, erudite, and irreverently reverent of all things human: what a singular nonfiction memoir. Not for the faint of heart (or is it?)

A Truce That is Not Peace takes its title from a piece of writing by the American poet Christian Winman. The full quote is long, but the soundbite worth mentioning is as follows:

"...wherein we might remember the dead without being haunted by them, give to our lives a coherence that is not ‘closure,’ and learn to live with our memories, our families, and ourselves amid a truce that is not peace.”

This is my second Miriam Toews reading experience, and frankly it has cemented her as one of my favorite authors.

I started this review off with a lot of terms and contradictory phrases because this is doing a lot—and, in a rare happy turn of events, doing all of it well.

It's equal parts a nonlinear reflection on writing as a vocation, a grief process, a suicidal musing, a sister's endless quake into the void, and a violent joie de vivre. The story's core is Toews grappling with the foundational losses of both her father and sister to suicide. How do you fathom the unthinkable? How do you reckon with yourself when the "unthinkable" is actually all-too-thinkable? What's next, after your world ends?

I'm blessed: I've never traveled these waters myself. My sister is alive and well, albeit on her own mental health journey. I myself never get anywhere near the "big sad," as my family calls it. Suicide has never crossed my mind. (These are deep blessings, I know, and I don't mean to trivialize or alienate those who resonate with the topics differently than I do.)

Being on my side of the mental fence, I found A Truce That Is Not Peace to be singularly poignant and educational from a perspective I've not experienced. It was brutal yet kind in its telling. I felt both witness and voyeur. It was, in essence, a thing of sharp-edged life that knew it was hurting itself and you in order to share its message.

My only critique—how does one critique a topic such as this—is that I do wonder at the latter section. Did I miss the point? Possibly, I'll own that flaw. I found the Wolfie/European journey letters-to-Marj bulk at the end to be an odd diversion from the form—the majority of the work is small, non-linear vignettes interspersed with quotations—and also overly weighted in length compared to the rest.

Review Note: If you've not gathered this yet, this work is Heavy. Please proceed with caution if you avoid topics of familial death, suicide, ideation, depression, etc.

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[Carolyn]

I’m at 33% and not going to continue with this book. It is a memoir, of sorts, and she is a very good writer. I’m not enjoying the non-linear and stream of consciousness style, though. Just not for me.

[Kevin]

Oh my God! Please attach this book to my body asap.

[Barbara K · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read two memoirs last year that stunned me with their artistry and touched me at an emotional level: Richard Flanagan’s Question 7 and Hanif Abdurraqib‘s There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension.

This year brings another, Miriam Toews’ brilliant, touching, intimate effort to come to terms with her family’s history of suicide. When she was asked to answer the question, “Why do you write” for a literary conference in Mexico City, Toews was unable to produce a response that was satisfactory to the organizer - but she was stimulated to explore the question in ways that had meaning for her.

Her process involved revisiting the suicides of her father and her sister, as well as the periods of selective mutism they both experienced, some times for years on end. They were silent; she worked with words. What is the connection? Is there a truth to be uncovered in this disparity?

"Silence and writing are, if not quite the same thing, then allies, each a misdirection of the unspeakable, and each a way of holding on."

(And her mother, not to be forgotten, learns hundreds of 3 letter words to improve her performance in Scrabble tournaments. More words.)

Although humor is threaded through the book, the pain Toews endures as she revisits her own past along with her family’s is uppermost. Her self-doubt and self-deprecation compete for our attention with the joy she expresses in being a daughter, mother and grandmother.

I’m pretty sure I will be haunted by this one for a long time to come, in awe of Toews’ artistry and willingness (or need?) to share.

[Jeatherhane Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I don’t believe my father and my sister were impulsive. They’d spent their lives planning their deaths, living their deaths, almost dying everyday, dying almost every day.”

If you’ve read Miriam Toews’ fiction, you’ll know that one of the most predominant themes in her work is suicide. Her life and her writing have been consumed with trying to understand the deaths of her father and sister.

In this memoir, Toews has created a fictional premise – she has been invited by the Conversación Comité in Mexico City to share a story or an essay on the subject “Why do I write?” The memoir tries to answer this question, never to the satisfaction of the Director of the Comité. Maybe not to the author’s own satisfaction, either.

None of it is chronological or complete. It is heartbreaking and funny, like her fiction. The short book includes letters that Miriam wrote to her sister Marj when the former was traveling in Europe. Vignettes about her family life, now and then. Musings about starting a wind museum. Trying to connect silence, suicide, and writing. And it’s about living with all of this and maybe never understanding it.

“Okay, Conversación Director. The writing is the reason. And 42.”

[Shannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t love this “memoir” by Canadian literary icon Miriam Toews at all. The one thing I will say is it’s a quick read but honestly it felt like the author was asked to write something and she just did it for the money. I wanted more vulnerability and openness not random musings. But that’s just my humble opinion. This is totally skip-able if you ask me.

[Tia]

I think boring people who want a conventional memoir will struggle with this but those who read it for what it is and who like questions and thoughts and memories and observations and tenderness and empathy will like it (so did I).

[Laurie Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one is interesting for sure, a memoir coming out from Miriam Toews in August 2025.

I have always been a big Miriam Toews fan, and have read almost everything she has written, so it was really interesting to get to read her memoir, although in a sense, it certainly doesn't read like a traditional memoir. In fact, sometimes it reminded me of "Ducks, Newburyport" by Lucy Ellmann in it's randomness and 'here is exactly what I am thinking' style of essays and arbitrary thoughts.

Toews has had a full life, with a lot of ups and downs, and some often real sad moments, but she maintains a sharp humour and wit. There are acute observations, and feelings of a deep sense of regret.
A lot of pondering on birth, and death and love as a balm.

[Robin S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

My queen.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a conventional memoir but more a book filled with memories and thoughts from Toews’s life which are in no particular order. Her life has been filled with trauma, but Toews maintains her sense of humour, making this a sad, funny, and honest book. I admire and love it.
Thank you Fourth Estate and Netgalley UK for the ARC.

[Jodie Ponto · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an absolute joy to read a new book from your favourite authors! This is a short & loose memoir written as she tries to prepare for a writer’s conversation on the theme of “Why Do I Write?”. Her answer gets her appearance at the event cancelled but gives us this beautiful book. It’s a dream-like picture of her life present & past told through a series of memories, letters, conversations, and everyday observations. One of the things I love most about her books is how they manage to be heavy & light at the same time. This is no exception … so many chuckles laced with so much grief over her father and sister’s suicides. If you are a fan of Miriam Toews you will love this book. If you haven’t read her books before I would recommended reading some of them (any of them!) first to get the full effect of this memoir.

[Reid Page-McTurner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ll preface this by saying I think Miriam Toews is a gift to literature; Women Talking is a must read and All My Puny Sorrows and Fight Night have been favourites of mine. If anyone will carry the mantle of Canadian authors it will be her. I loved the first half of this book but it lost steam for me when she inexplicably wanders into a lengthy segment with a former lover. The rest- the exploration of guilt and trauma. The wind museum bits. The strange and unassuming way she gets under your skin… genius. Toews comes from Manitoba, the province next to my native Saskatchewan and I said to my mom that Toews writes like the prairie: seemingly flat but full of subtle magnificence. 3/5
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#miriamtoews #atrucethatisnotpeace

[Joachim Stoop · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my book

[Claire · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Truce That Is Not Peace - Life and Death So Far

"...we might remember the dead without being haunted by them, give to our lives a coherence that is not 'closure,' and learn to live with out memories, our families, and ourselves amid a truce that is not peace." - Christian Wiman

I've often been tempted but never read any of Miriam Toews works, so this might not be the best place to start, but I was intrigued. While her novels are not autobiographies, they address the emotional, spiritual, and political terrain of her own life - her Mennonite upbringing, her family’s struggles with mental illness, and the burden of communal silence. A Truce That Is Not Peace makes those long-standing concerns fully explicit, acknowledging the reality behind those themes explored in her novels.

The memoir is written in a fragmented journal entry style, one that continued to visit and revisit a number of current obsessions and memories she kept going back to, things from the past that haunted her, her father and sister's suicides, their long periods of silence, their incessant need to write, her conversations and the questions asked by a Jungian therapist, who she reassures each visit that she is not suicidal (having read that is the greatest fear therapists have of their clients), though it is all she talks about.

It then switches into current desires, a wind museum idea, how to negotiate getting her royalties back from her ex-husband, and repeated attempts to answer the question Why Do I Write?, as the Conversación Comité who invited her to respond to that question, in anticipation of participating in a conversation in Mexico City, keeps rejecting her submissions as being not altogether what they were looking for, while attempts to rewrite it have her dreaming about her Wind Museum.

Various quotes, letters, emails, dreams, nightmares; musings and memories litter the text as the author grapples with what presents itself in her life, and then the words of others arrive as if to provide validation or a way to get to that truce she seeks.

"Punishment, perhaps, or some contagion of fate, finds her here, her hair shorn, both wrists wrapped, her eyes open, pondering the parable of perfect silence." - Christian Wiman

The text is interrupted by grandchildren activities, worries about biting habits, by questions she asks her mother, by the antics of family gatherings, of things falling apart in the house, the river that runs beneath it, a skunk with distemper that keeps trying to return to the now renovated back deck and falling into the window well. A close encounter with a plane in a blizzard on a highway, all while trying to find a way to navigate this life, this 'truce that is not peace'.

It reminded me of reading Terry Tempest Williams When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice, another memoir type work that circles her many obsessions that she struggles to find a connection between. Her list of things she wrote of were Great Salt Lake, Mother, Bear River Bird Refuge, Family, Flood, Cancer, Division of Wildlife Resources, Mormon Church, subjects that resided within her, evolving and changing shape like a murmuration.

Miriam Toews makes her list: Wind Museum, Deranged Skunk, North-west quadrant with ex
Conversacion in Mexico City, Neighbours.

I found the style confusing at first, but then because she returns to the same subjects, I started seeing the pattern. She mixes heavy subjects with the mundane of every day life, and shares pockets of humour and tenderness amid the pain. I think it would have helped had I read some of her other work, but it is not necessary.

[Fransien Vandeweghe · Rating 4 out of 5]

4,5 '*

[Aaron Piel · Rating 4 out of 5]

“In that space or spit of land or corridor, the silence of my sister, the suffering that destroyed her language, or destroyed language, or destroyed faith in language’s ability to communicate anything of the human soul, or of her soul, it’s all wind, the unmaking of her world, of the world—and in that space or spot of land or corridor, is her asking me to write, to re-make my world, her world, the world.”

I found myself a bit annoyed at first at the writing style when reading this memoir, but she eventually brings it all together in a beautiful way that helped me make sense of it as a whole, and I ended up really enjoying it.

[Mckenna Baron · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5, rounded down

My book club pick!

I think Miriam Toews is a genius and Fight Night is currently my favourite book, with All my Puny Sorrows in my top 5 as well. It pains me to rate this a 3, but rounding up to a 4 would just be due to my bias.

In her memoir, she is an expert at intertwining her tragedies with laugh-out-loud humour and heart-wrenching tenderness (as per).

It is so very clear that she bases many of her fictional characters on her loved ones, so much so there are times I forgot which book I was reading!

Touching, heart-breaking, hilarious, but a bit too fragmented for me. I got used to it as I went on, and it is a very quick read, but had I not already known and loved her, I suspect it would have been difficult to get through.

There were parts I really loved, I cried, I laughed, and I will continue to read anything she ever publishes.

P.S. would you rather be described as fickle or stalwart? I’m leaning towards fickle, but that could change ;)

P.S.S. The men at The Kingshead are STILL nimrods.

[Sam Cheng · Rating 5 out of 5]

Toews’s newest nonfic. work, A Truce That is Not Peace, intersects her older sister’s (Marj) death by suicide at 52 and Toews’s search to understand her reason for writing. Posed as a thought experiment, she pretends to prepare her Conversación piece for the Mexico City conference, answering the question, “Why do I write?” In memoir-ish manner, Toews reveals how Marj “punctuated her life with long periods of [verbal] silence,” while the author naturally feels compelled to write. Yet the why—the meaning—in both cases continually eludes her.

The work includes Toews’s rumination over these concepts: her attempt at ending her life; her dad’s struggle with bipolar disorder, choice to stop speaking in various seasons of his life, and suicide; her caregiving to her mom, Elvira (90); and her role as a grandmother. Prompted by Marj’s request to hear about Toews’s hitchhiking trip in Europe, the author recounts her motivation for writing letters to keep Marj alive. She incorporates these letters into the book. In turn, Marj teaches Toews that writing keeps her (Toews) alive.

Additionally, Toews entwines the following concepts within her larger project: she invents an organizing theme for her metaphorical Wind Museum to emphasize her perception of her work’s questionable worth; she parleys with her ex-husband for her royalties; the magnetism of character-driven books wherein the author avoids a narrative and opts for readers to observe and to experience living. And there’s a skunk clawing its way into her house, a metaphor for home-going. Toews appraises plenty of ideas, and in their fragmented form, she depicts a cohesive yet incomplete answer to her raison d’être.

Capturing Freud’s notion of “a natural unhappiness,” Toews names the book after a line in Christian Wiman’s The Limit. I found the work captivating and affecting in its quiet nature, and I celebrated how Elvira and the grandkids bring life, if you will, to the pages. Perhaps the timing of my read, on the heels of Calabro’s piece on MAiD in The Atlantic’s September issue, which has been stewing on my mind, adds to my experience of “staying with” Toews in her sorrow, her pain, her sadness. For her, life lies in the met fragments of effort, in silence and words; A Truce That is Not Peace will do.

I hope I run into Toews on Queen W, both en route to Type Books.

I rate A Truce That is Not Peace 4.5 stars. My thanks to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for an ARC.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5 ⭐

Thanks Netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for my unbiased review!

I am a HUGE fan of Miriam Toews, having read every book she has published. I discovered her when I was in high school, growing up in the same town and culture she grew up in, which often serves as the backdrop of her novels.

This memoir isn't your typical one; it jumps back and forth between time, space, memory, and imagination. Billy Ray-Belcourt helped me change my perspective on the art of storytelling and breaking free from the typical moulds, and I think this aligns with his world. Toews pushes boundaries with this, and that may deter some people.

Because Toews and I had similar upbringings, I have learned a lot about myself through her writing. I've felt seen and understood, and this book is no different. I realize I have always wondered how she navigates the world, especially because two of her immediate family members died by suicide. And this book provides a small window into her life, which I love! Just like her works of fiction, she somehow artfully weaves in humour amidst tragedy. Maybe (totally) humour is how she has coped with hardship? While reading this book takes some intense u-turns, from shock to laughing out loud, back to shock.

This book is an ode to writing and being an artist and why artists create. As someone who loves photography, I often have an unexpressable desire to take pictures, almost like a compulsion, so reading this I was thinking alot about why I do what I do.

[Shelby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hated this book until I absolutely loved it. Give it a chance, I guess, because if you like Miriam’s fiction you’ll probably love this once you figure out what she’s trying to do here.

[Anna Farley]

There's something about Miriam Toews' writing (especially her more personal writing) that I wish I could just always be reading. Something about her Wind Museum, and her chaotic Toronto house full of children and strangers and a distempered skunk, and her mother who has no trouble running only trouble breathing, and so much sadness and so much joy.
I don't know how else to describe it, but to me Miriam Toews' writing feels as close to life as I've ever read.

I'm not sure how well this book would stand on its own, but it follows so well from two of my favourites "A Complicated Kindness" and "All My Puny Sorrows"(it makes me so happy that the mother I loved so much in this, really is so much like her own mother).

[Audrey Steinburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love you Miriam Toews 🫶 Beautiful bits of a life - I like the unconventional timeline and format of Toews’ work and found it so perfectly reflected the ways we live in the present and past simultaneously. Heartfelt, devastating in one breath and funny in the next, worth the read (or listen) - my favourite author

[Kelly (The Happiest Little Book Club)]

Miriam can do no wrong in my world. After seeing her speak at an author event Tuesday night, I knew I had to read (listen) to this one. I binged it in one go.

I love her raw, unapologetic writing style and had some great laughs. Her dry wit and sarcastic sense of humour are right up my alley.

It is memoir-esque so I won’t formally rate it but I LOVED it.

Thank you to @Libro.fm for the ALC.

[Vincent Scarpa · Rating 5 out of 5]

“My sister punctuated her life with long periods of silence. It was during these periods that she begged me to write her letters — about anything, my life, the days — and in that asking was an offering. She taught me how to stay alive. Silence and words: both are good, both are failures, both are efforts, and in that effort is where life lies — not lies, or maybe it does — but where it exists. And the fragments in between are the spaces where she and I meet.”