Women Talking

By: Miriam Toews

Narrated by: Matthew Edison

Length: 5 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's summary

A transformative and necessary work - as completely unexpected as it is inspired - by the award-winning author of the best-selling novels All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness.

Based on actual events that happened between 2005 and 2009 in a remote Mennonite community where more than 100 girls and women were drugged unconscious and assaulted in the night by what they were told (by the men of the colony) were "ghosts" or "demons", Miriam Toews' bold and affecting novel Women Talking is an imagined response to these real events.

The novel takes place over 48 hours as eight women gather in secret in a neighbor's barn while the men are in a nearby town posting bail for the attackers. They have come together to debate, on behalf of all the women and children in the community, whether to stay or leave before the men return. Taking minutes is the one man trusted and invited by the women to witness the conversation - a former outcast whose own surprising story is revealed as the women speak.

By turns poignant, witty, acerbic, bitter, tender, devastating, and heartbreaking, the voices in this extraordinary novel are unforgettable. Toews has chosen to focus the novel tightly on a particular time and place, and yet it contains within its 48 hours and setting inside a hayloft an entire vast universe of thinking and feeling about the experience of women (and therefore men, too) in our contemporary world. In a word: astonishing.

©2018 Miriam Toews (P)2018 Penguin Random House Canada Ltd.

almost couldn't finish

The story is important to tell but there just wasn't a lot of perspective.

Extraordinary

Beauty
Soul and mind
To think
To love
To keep our children safe
Prayerful powerful

Wow!

Powerful story and message. A must “read” for sure. It left me wanting to know more about the real story behind the book.

Stunningly Beautiful

I couldn’t stop listening, the narration and the story swept me up, engrossing me in the women’s philosophical debates, slowly revealed hardships and August’s deep love.

Very thought provoking

At first, I was shocked, a man was reading the book. It seemed like a bad choice. I slowly understood. This story of women taking care of their children is very powerful. I definitely recommend.

Brilliant!

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this story but I was instantly intrigued with the premise. I’ve always loved stories that feature heavy dialog on heavy topics. Think (movie wise) My dinner with Andre or Mindwalk. So this novel of women discussing the tragic events of their abuse, the dismissal of their concerns and what they plan to do about it seemed right up my alley. And it was! But it was so much more. It was sad and it was hopeful. It was dark and it was beautiful. It was more than just women talking. It was women aggressively living in an unkind world. Women choosing their own fate. Soft women holding hard resentments and hard women being softly compassionate. I will carry this story with me for a long time.

Amazing book!❤️

Amazing story. Little known facts expressively told! Book was fantastic beautifully written! Performance so perfectly told!

Lovely.

What a pleasure to listen to this presentation of this book. The careful explication of the predicament and the decisions made is both simple and deeply moving. Well read, grateful for the simple reading, it fit the story very well.

Thank you Matthew Edison for narrating this book.

Thank you Miriam Toews for writing this book and phenomenal story. To the women and girls of Milacha I am so sorry that you were raped by the men you thought you could trust and feel safe with. To the men of Milacha how could you?

Powerful for the Questions It Raises.

Like a many-sided polygon, Toews’ novel touches on all the hopes, fears, doubts, thoughts, and feelings of this Community of Women.

Through her words she reflects the multitude of questions we all face in the communities we’re all a part of: Marriage, Career, Family, Church, Nation, etc. Go along to get along? Silently endure to keep the peace? Stay and fight for change? Or just ride away, hoping for greener grass over the horizon?!

We don’t come away from this book knowing how their decisions will work out, just like we don’t know the results of our own response to the hands we’ve been dealt, but we are better off being aware of the issues we face.

Glad to have had the experience. Four Stars. ****