This is a strange book in that, by the end of it, you have experienced a nuanced and sad story and yet the first-person narrator didn’t actually tell you. The narrator in this case is sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel, who lives in East Town, a small Mennonite town in Manitoba. On the first page she tells us that both her mother and her sister have disappeared, and that she is living with her father, Ray, who is engulfed by grief at the loss of his wife. The Mennonite church and her uncle Hans, whom she nicknames ‘The Mouth’ are dominant in the town, with the school, the local doctor and the school counsellor all members of the church. Nomi and her generation are the first Mennonite cohort to grow up with English as their first language: her parents and their generation continue to speak in low German. The community world view is shaped by their heritage, and the story of Menno Simons who formed his group out of the Anabaptists during the sixteenth century, leading to waves of emigration out of Europe to countries more accepting of their religion. East Town is a tourist attraction to American and Canadian travellers, and the Mennonite community plays along with its ‘living’ Heritage museum. Yet despite the town’s apparent devoutness, the teenagers in East Town are unruly and out of control, with alcohol, drug use and premarital and underage sex all rampant. Nomi is too, just like her older sister Tash was, and her father Ray is powerless to rein her in.
At first I thought that this was going to be a mystery: what did happen to Nomi’s mother Trudie, who left suddenly and taking nothing with her? It is only gradually that we learn the back-story of Nomi’s family, with her sister Tash’s rejection by the church and her father once she escapes the community with her boyfriend. We see Nomi embark on a similar trajectory, with her father making a surprising sacrifice at the end which leaves options open for Nomi to chart her own course.
The structure of the book is intriguing. It is only at the end that we realize that the narrative is a school assignment, written for her cantankerous English teacher Mr Quiring, with whom she clashes frequently. We gradually learn that Mr Quiring has had more of an effect on Nomi’s family situation than she realizes.
I chose this book for our bookgroup read, but it wasn’t actually the book I meant to choose! I had intended to suggest Women Talking, also by Miriam Toews, but we enjoyed this book nonetheless.
My rating: 8/10
Read because: CAE bookgroup selection.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 