Women Talking: (Movie Tie-In)
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Description
“This amazing, sad, shocking, but touching novel, based on a real-life event, could be right out of The Handmaid's Tale.” --Margaret Atwood, on Twitter
"Scorching . . . Women Talking is a wry, freewheeling novel of ideas that touches on the nature of evil, questions of free will, collective responsibility, cultural determinism, and, above all, forgiveness." --New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice
One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.
While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women―all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in―have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they’ve ever known or should they dare to escape?
Based on real events and told through the “minutes” of the women’s all-female symposium, Toews’s masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide.
Named a Best Book of the Year By
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (Notable Books of the Year) * NPR.ORG* THE WASHINGTON POST * REAL SIMPLE * THE NEW YORK TIMES (PARUL SEHGAL'S TOP BOOKS OF THE YEAR) * SLATE * STAR TRIBUNE (MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL) * LITHUB * AUSTIN CHRONICLE * GOOP* ELECTRIC LITERATURE * KIRKUS REVIEWS * JEZEBEL* BUSTLE * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY * TIME* LIBRARY JOURNAL * THE AV CLUB * MASHABLE * VOX *
Book Information
Posts
Aufwühlend
Es ist nicht einfach, eine Entscheidung zu treffen, die das Leben verändert, wenn man nicht weiß, was einen außerhalb der heimische Mauern erwartet. Und trotzdem will diese Gruppe Frauen sich nicht mit ihrem Schicksal zufrieden geben, dass sie unterdrückt, vergewaltigt und für dumm gehalten werden. Die Diskussion der Frauen in Vorbereitung auf ihr Gehen, stellt einfach alles in Frage und das Wissen, dass es sich nicht um reine Fiktion handelt, macht es schwer, nicht emotional mitgerissen zu werden.
Timely, sharp, gentle and beautiful, like women. Women talking who, in their insularity and immediacy, connect with history and stories everywhere and any time. As Catherine Lacey suggested in the “between the covers” with Miriam Toews, it feels like a book that came to be at a fast clip, from beginning to end, uninterrupted and smoothly. The form, the unreliable narrator (an image of the writer herself, to be allowed the task to write the women’s thoughts), the characters, are all a small masterpiece.
so … it took me almost two weeks to read ~ 215 pages. To clarify: I have not seen the movie (that is apparently rather successful). I only picked this book up because the synopsis sounded good. It is not. Sorry, maybe i am too much of a „reading to have a good time, not spending a lot of time thinking too hard about what i read“-girl, but subjectively: This is not a good book. It seems to be based on true events, where the women of a Mennonite colony are assaulted in their sleep by a group of men for YEARS and wake up with weird bruises and no idea what happened to them. I have not done any research on that because that is just gruesome. But also this novel starts after some of the rapists were put into jail and the men had collectively gone out to try and post bail for those other men. The women then meet up and discuss what they are going to to now. The cannot read, cannot write and they don‘t even speak the language of the country they live in. Some are in favour of doing nothing, other suggest fighting, others just leaving. The whole book is a discussion of the pro and cons. It touches on the question if them leaving somehow risks their place in heaven, because they disobey the word of god (which is interpreted for them by their men, of course). Who are they taking with them? Were is the cutoff for the age of male kids that are allowed to come? Should they bring the boys at all? What are the logistics etc. It is literally just 215 pages of the „women talking“, as the title suggest. There are almost no direct conversations just „she said“ and „then she remarked that“. Indirect speech, everywhere, all the time. And all of it written down by whom? A man. It apparently has to be a man, because none of the women can write, but then again: Why write anything down? What if the wrong person finds those notes? It just IRKS me that even if it makes sense storywise we have a man writing down things that are talked about. And some things he thinks about, while the women presumably keep talking or do other things he deems not important enough to write down. He also keeps injecting himself into the conversation, causing confusion and diverting the discussion. To top it off he is in love with one of the women and would just do anything to please her and hear her say his name. I feel like he would probably come in his pants if she looked at him AND said his name at the same time. He gave me the ick from the start with his observations. I don‘t understand why his backstory would be important at all and why i had to read about it. I wanted to stop reading, honestly. But i don‘t usually keep books unfinished, especially short ones like this that i would usually be able to finish in less than three hours. Almost TWO WEEKS later i am finally done. Can‘t recommend. But then again, maybe i an just not *sophisticated* enough to be able to appreciate a book like this.
Description
“This amazing, sad, shocking, but touching novel, based on a real-life event, could be right out of The Handmaid's Tale.” --Margaret Atwood, on Twitter
"Scorching . . . Women Talking is a wry, freewheeling novel of ideas that touches on the nature of evil, questions of free will, collective responsibility, cultural determinism, and, above all, forgiveness." --New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice
One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm.
While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women―all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in―have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they’ve ever known or should they dare to escape?
Based on real events and told through the “minutes” of the women’s all-female symposium, Toews’s masterful novel uses wry, politically engaged humor to relate this tale of women claiming their own power to decide.
Named a Best Book of the Year By
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW (Notable Books of the Year) * NPR.ORG* THE WASHINGTON POST * REAL SIMPLE * THE NEW YORK TIMES (PARUL SEHGAL'S TOP BOOKS OF THE YEAR) * SLATE * STAR TRIBUNE (MINNEAPOLIS-ST. PAUL) * LITHUB * AUSTIN CHRONICLE * GOOP* ELECTRIC LITERATURE * KIRKUS REVIEWS * JEZEBEL* BUSTLE * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY * TIME* LIBRARY JOURNAL * THE AV CLUB * MASHABLE * VOX *
Book Information
Posts
Aufwühlend
Es ist nicht einfach, eine Entscheidung zu treffen, die das Leben verändert, wenn man nicht weiß, was einen außerhalb der heimische Mauern erwartet. Und trotzdem will diese Gruppe Frauen sich nicht mit ihrem Schicksal zufrieden geben, dass sie unterdrückt, vergewaltigt und für dumm gehalten werden. Die Diskussion der Frauen in Vorbereitung auf ihr Gehen, stellt einfach alles in Frage und das Wissen, dass es sich nicht um reine Fiktion handelt, macht es schwer, nicht emotional mitgerissen zu werden.
Timely, sharp, gentle and beautiful, like women. Women talking who, in their insularity and immediacy, connect with history and stories everywhere and any time. As Catherine Lacey suggested in the “between the covers” with Miriam Toews, it feels like a book that came to be at a fast clip, from beginning to end, uninterrupted and smoothly. The form, the unreliable narrator (an image of the writer herself, to be allowed the task to write the women’s thoughts), the characters, are all a small masterpiece.
so … it took me almost two weeks to read ~ 215 pages. To clarify: I have not seen the movie (that is apparently rather successful). I only picked this book up because the synopsis sounded good. It is not. Sorry, maybe i am too much of a „reading to have a good time, not spending a lot of time thinking too hard about what i read“-girl, but subjectively: This is not a good book. It seems to be based on true events, where the women of a Mennonite colony are assaulted in their sleep by a group of men for YEARS and wake up with weird bruises and no idea what happened to them. I have not done any research on that because that is just gruesome. But also this novel starts after some of the rapists were put into jail and the men had collectively gone out to try and post bail for those other men. The women then meet up and discuss what they are going to to now. The cannot read, cannot write and they don‘t even speak the language of the country they live in. Some are in favour of doing nothing, other suggest fighting, others just leaving. The whole book is a discussion of the pro and cons. It touches on the question if them leaving somehow risks their place in heaven, because they disobey the word of god (which is interpreted for them by their men, of course). Who are they taking with them? Were is the cutoff for the age of male kids that are allowed to come? Should they bring the boys at all? What are the logistics etc. It is literally just 215 pages of the „women talking“, as the title suggest. There are almost no direct conversations just „she said“ and „then she remarked that“. Indirect speech, everywhere, all the time. And all of it written down by whom? A man. It apparently has to be a man, because none of the women can write, but then again: Why write anything down? What if the wrong person finds those notes? It just IRKS me that even if it makes sense storywise we have a man writing down things that are talked about. And some things he thinks about, while the women presumably keep talking or do other things he deems not important enough to write down. He also keeps injecting himself into the conversation, causing confusion and diverting the discussion. To top it off he is in love with one of the women and would just do anything to please her and hear her say his name. I feel like he would probably come in his pants if she looked at him AND said his name at the same time. He gave me the ick from the start with his observations. I don‘t understand why his backstory would be important at all and why i had to read about it. I wanted to stop reading, honestly. But i don‘t usually keep books unfinished, especially short ones like this that i would usually be able to finish in less than three hours. Almost TWO WEEKS later i am finally done. Can‘t recommend. But then again, maybe i an just not *sophisticated* enough to be able to appreciate a book like this.