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"Half of our family, the better-looking
half, is missing," Nomi tells us at the beginning of
A Complicated Kindness. Left alone with her sad, peculiar
father, her days are spent piecing together why her mother
and sister have disappeared and contemplating her inevitable
career at Happy Family Farms, a chicken slaughterhouse on
the outskirts of East Village-not the East Village in New
York City where Nomi would prefer to live, but a dull, oppressive
town founded by Mennonites on the cold, flat plains of Manitoba,
Canada.
This moving, darkly funny novel is the world according to
Nomi Nickel, a bewildered and wry sixteen-year-old trapped
in a town governed by fundamentalist religion. In Nomi's
droll, refreshing voice, we're told the story of her eccentric,
touching family as it falls apart, each member on a collision
course with the only community they have ever known. A work
of fierce humor and tragedy by a writer poised to take the
American market by storm, this searing, tender, comic testament
to family love will break your heart.
Miriam Toews is the award-winning Canadian author of two
novels and one work of non-fiction. She lives in Winnipeg,
Manitoba.
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