Swing Low

A Life

De: Miriam Toews

Narrado por: David Hamilton, Miriam Toews

From the bestselling author of Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, and A Complicated Kindness, and Women Talking comes an extraordinary memoir about her father and his struggle with manic depression.

One morning, Mel Toews put on his coat and hat and walked out of town, prepared to die. A loving husband and father, faithful member of the Mennonite church, and immensely popular school teacher, he was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggle, he could no longer face the darkness of manic depression. In Swing Low, his daughter Miriam recounts Mel's life as she imagines he would have told it, right up to the day he took his final walk. A gracefully written and compassionate recounting of a man's battle with depression in a small Mennonite community, Swing Low is a moving meditation on illness, family, faith and love.

Reseñas de la Crítica

Winner of the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and the Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-Fiction

“Audacious, original and profoundly moving . . . A deeply affecting work. . . .This is a document for the living, and its virtues are more than literary; healing is a likely outcome of a book imbued with the righteous anger, compassion and humanity of Swing Low.”
—The Globe and Mail

“A fine, fluent book teeming with anecdote and incident, echoes and images. . . . Swing Low is a detailed, textured portrait, not just of human life, but of a community, of small-town, Mennonite Manitoba.”
—Quill & Quire

“Toews’ novelistic skills . . . are richly apparent in her evocative characterizations and in the deft drama of the narrative. . . . A profoundly affecting book.”
—Toronto Star

“Poignant and profound. . . . I was drawn to her writing, her ability to access the voice of her father; to negotiate complex emotions and pose difficult questions. Her work also posed questions about genre as Toews captured the imagined inner voice of her father.”
—Connie Braun, Mennonite Today

“A touching memoir.”
—Publishers Weekly

"There's an engaging wryness to Toews's writing . . . a fierce sincerity. . . . Toews's dry humour and playful prose win the day. . . . In Swing Low, Miriam Toews sings The Depressed Person's Blues in a sure, sly, compelling way."
—Annabel Lyon, MIX

"Combine[s] sharp observations about family and community with pitch-perfect one-liners and endearingly eccentric characters."
—The New York Times Book Review