All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I found All My Puny Sorrows a difficult one to rate. On Amazon, I’ve gone for 4 stars, to give credit to the exquisite writing. I can’t remember the last time I read a book where every page was a masterpiece. On the other hand, I found the pace a bit…glacial in its slowness.
Don’t let that put you off giving All My Puny Sorrows a try. Most reviews are glowing, which is why I feel OK about going for a 3 star rating here. It would have been a three and a half, if I’d had the option.
3 Comments
Submit a Comment
Coming March 2020, click to pre-order on Amazon
I’m Reading
To The River, by Olivia Laing
I enjoyed this, but I can very much understand where you’re coming from when you say the pace is particularly slow. It’s a necessity, I think, but it still has an impact on the book as an experience.
My review: All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
I’ve felt a similar response to a couple of books lately, and I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s because my own writing has become more plot-driven through the editing process of the last year or so. If you’d asked me five years ago, I’d have identified as a character-driven author on the literary end of the scale. Turns out my debut is more book club suspense. I’m enjoying that a lot, mind you, but means that my ‘pace’ antennae are active as I read and review.
You might well be on to something there – when I wrote my own debut novel (completely character-driven) it really made me think about the sort of books I enjoyed and I realised that most of them were first-person narratives and very much about the interior life of the narrator. Funny the things writing teaches you about your reading life!