Miriam Toew: A Complicated Kindness

Introduction

Authors use their books as a canvas to paint the picture of what they feel or what have experienced in life. Writing a book or publishing a novel allows many people especially the authors to vent out the feelings they have bottled up inside them for many years. And if books are a success, they can be taken to the silver screen and converted into an Oscar or Emmy winning movie. Similarly Canadian born Miriam Toew wrote the book called “A Complicated kindness” which made it to the silver screen and was an instant hit.

Discussion

Miriam Toew is a Canadian author who wrote a number of English fictions. She is a Mennonite descent which made her a minority with different beliefs and which provoked her to write books, so she could vent out her ideas. More than a decade ago she wrote her first book called “summer of my amazing luck”, then wrote “A boy of good breeding” and after another book, wrote the book called Complicated Kindness which was an instant hit and therefore made it to the screen in 2004. Her breakthrough novel won the Govern General's award in Canada. The novel Complicated Kindness is a depiction of Toew's self. Since Toew is a Mennonite descent which singled her out from many things, made her look as the odd one out and therefore missed out a lot of things in her childhood.

She depicted herself in the main character of the movie by name of Naomi Nickel. Naomi Nickel is a 16 yr old Mennonite who is utterly confused about her faith and feels disconnected from the world around her. Naomi or Nomi as called by her sister Tash who could not pronounce her name, is a girl experiencing everything a normal teen would but unfortunately everything is not smooth as it seems like it. Her only mentor her elder sister Tash is expelled from the church of her belief due to her rebellious attitude and non compliance of the faith. She leaves town and escapes to another place. After 2 months or so, Naomi's mother Trudie is also thrown out of the church and therefore leaves her husband and leaves the town. Poor Naomi is lost as there is no one to guide her, so following the footsteps of her immediate sibling and mother, she leaves the church and flees to New York with this guy called Lou, who she is madly in love with. She leaves her small Russian Mennonite oriented town and spends time with Lou in the Slums of New York. As toew narrates the story she conveys her ideas through the main character and tells the reader through Nomi “Life being what it is, one dreams not of revenge. One just dreams." that Toew's beautifully describes the sudden outbreak of the main character from the caged Mennonite Confined town she belongs too.

When one reads the book it shows how Toew is unsatisfied with the faith she ...