Miriam Toews’ A Complicated Kindness Free Downloadable PDF A Complicated Kindness written by MiriamToews Click here to order your paperback copy today. Few novels in recent years have generated as much excitement as A Complicated Kindness. Winner of the Governor General’s Award and a Giller Prize Finalist, Miriam Toews’ third novel has earned both critical acclaim and a long and steady position on our national bestseller lists. “Poignant....Bold, tender and intelligent, this is a clear-eyed exploration of belief and belonging, and the irresistible urge to escape both.” —Publishers Weekly Your download also includes the first chapter of Toews’ new book, The Flying Troutmans, on sale September 2, 2008. A novel that is at once hilarious and heartrending, The Flying Troutmans is about a family on the verge of spinning off its axles and a road trip that just may keep it together. When Hattie receives an SOS call in Paris from her eleven-year-old niece, the decision to return to Canada is slam-dunk easy, because she’s just been dumped by her boyfriend. But when she arrives back, her sister, Min, is on her way to the psychiatric ward, and Hattie is left to take care of Min’s children, Thebes and Logan. When she realizes that this may become a permanent arrangement, Hattie hatches a plan. Without much more than an old address to go on, the three of them set off on a wild road trip to find the kids’ long-lost father. Click here to Pre-order yours today! Miriam Toews was born in 1964 in the small Mennonite town of Steinbach, Manitoba. She left Steinbach at eighteen, living in Montreal and London and touring Europe before coming back to Manitoba, where she earned a B.A. in film studies at the University of Manitoba. Later she packed up with her children and partner and moved to Halifax to attend the University of King’s College, where she received a bachelor’s degree in Photo © Carol Loewen journalism. Upon returning to Winnipeg with her family in 1991, she freelanced at the CBC, making radio documentaries. When her youngest daughter started nursery school, Toews decided it was time to try writing a novel. Check out Miriam Toews’s profile on Indigo Community. Copyright: This book is protected by copyright and is reproduced here by permission of the author and Random House of Canada Limited. Toew_0676976131_3p_all_r1.qxp 6/6/08 11:54 AM Page vi Toew_0676976131_3p_all_r1.qxp 6/6/08 11:54 AM Page vi Toew_0676976131_3p_all_r1.qxp 6/6/08 11:54 AM Page i Praise for A Complicated Kindness “This sad, bittersweet and oddball novel stands apart from the crowd. For her moving portrayal of how family ties can be ripped apart, Toews deserves to be up there with other top-notch writers— Margaret Atwood, Rohinton Mistry, Yann Martel—who have come out of Canada over the past few years.”—Scotland on Sunday “A Complicated Kindness is a delight from beginning to end. The humour might be of the blackest sort (‘People here just can’t wait to die, it seems. It’s the main event.’), but the cumulative effect is liberating and defiantly joyful.”—Daily Mail (UK) “Toews, somewhat like Mordecai Richler, makes you feel the pain of her protagonist while elucidating the predicament of her people, always mixing a large dose of empathy with her iconoclastic sense of the ridiculous. When she’s funny, she’s wickedly so.” —The Gazette (Montreal) “There is so much here that’s accomplished and fine. The momentum of the narrative, the quality of the storytelling, the startling images, the brilliant rendering of a time and place, the observant, cataloguing eye of the writer, her great grace. But if I had to name Miriam Toews’s crowning achievement, it would be the creation of Nomi Nickel, who deserves to take her place beside Daisy Goodwill Flett and Pi Patel and Hagar Shipley as a brilliantly realized character for whom the reader comes to care; okay, comes to love.”—The Globe and Mail “Truly wonderful . one of the year’s exuberant reads. Toews recreates the stultifying world of an exasperated Mennonite teenager in a small town where nothing happens with mesmerizing auth- enticity. Toews seduces the reader with her tenderness, astute observation and piquant humour. But then she turns the laughs she’s engendered in the reader like a knife.”—Toronto Star Toew_0676976131_3p_all_r1.qxp 6/6/08 11:54 AM Page ii “A Complicated Kindness, at its core, is a depiction of the battle between hope and despair . yet along the way we are treated to an unforgettable summer with a heroine who loses everything but is ultimately able to hold on to life, to a sense of herself and to maintain her courage and optimism in the face of a world without any guaranteed happy endings.”—The Georgia Straight “There have been a lot of Holden Caulfield knockoffs since 1951, but few authors have been as successful as J. D. Salinger in chan- nelling adolescent angst in a way that’s as charming as it is profound. Miriam Toews hits that elusive mark with her new novel. In fact, A Complicated Kindness just may be a future classic in its own right. This is a wonderful book because it reminds us of the beauty and meaning in one small moment of one small life.” —Philadelphia Inquirer “In a novel full of original characters . Toews has created a feisty but appealing young heroine. As an indictment against religious fund- amentalism, A Complicated Kindness is timely. As a commentary on character, it is fresh and inventive, and as storytelling it is first rate.” —The London Free Press “Told with the slouchy, cool grace of a misfit teen, this sparkly novel is destined to become a coming-of-age classic.”—Elle (UK) “With uncanny accuracy, Toews captures the claustrophobia of a conservative Mennonite town. Over and over, she releases the tension of it with a direct comic hit.”—Literary Review of Canada “Wry and saturated with comic invention, A Complicated Kindness possesses one of the strongest fictional voices since Holden Caulfield vented his spleen.”—Time Out (UK) “Scathing, bittersweet and twistedly funny. A strikingly fresh and offbeat voice.”—The Seattle Times Toew_0676976131_3p_all_r1.qxp 6/6/08 11:54 AM Page iii a novel a complicated kindness miriam toews vintage canada Toew_0676976131_3p_all_r1.qxp 6/6/08 11:54 AM Page iv Copyright © 2004 Miriam Toews All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2005. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2004. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House of Canada Limited. www.randomhouse.ca Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Toews, Miriam, 1964– A complicated kindness : a novel / Miriam Toews. ISBN 0-676-97613-1 I. Title. PS8589.O6352C64 2005 C813'.54 C2004-905230-6 Book design by Kelly Hill Printed and bound in Canada 246897531 Toew_0676976131_3p_all_r1.qxp 6/6/08 11:54 AM Page v To Marj Toew_0676976131_3p_all_r1.qxp 6/6/08 11:54 AM Page vi Toew_0676976131_3p_all_r1.qxp 6/6/08 11:54 AM Page 1 one live with my father, Ray Nickel, in that low brick bungalow Iout on highway number twelve. Blue shutters, brown door, one shattered window. Nothing great. The furniture keeps disappearing, though. That keeps things interesting. Half of our family, the better-looking half, is missing. Ray and I get up in the morning and move through our various activities until it’s time to go to bed. Every single night around ten o’clock Ray tells me that he’s hitting the hay. Along the way to his bedroom he’ll stop in the front hallway and place notes on top of his shoes to remind him of the things he has to do the next day. We enjoy staring at the Northern Lights together. I told him, verbatim, what Mr. Quiring told us in class. About how those lights work. He thought Mr. Quiring had some interesting points. He’s always been mildly interested in Mr. Quiring’s opinions, probably because he’s also a teacher. I have assignments to complete. That’s the word, complete. I’ve got a problem with endings. Mr. Quiring has told me that essays and stories generally come, organically, to a preordained ending that is quite out of the writer’s control. He says we will know it when it happens, the ending. I don’t know about that. I feel that there are so many to choose from. I’m already anticipating failure. That much I’ve learned to do. But 1 Toew_0676976131_3p_all_r1.qxp 6/6/08 11:54 AM Page 2 2 miriam toews then what the hell will it matter to me while I’m snapping tiny necks and chucking feathery corpses onto a conveyor belt in a dimly lit cinder-block slaughterhouse on the edge of a town not of this world. Most of the kids from around here will end up working at Happy Family Farms, where local chickens go to meet their maker. I’m sixteen now, young to be on the verge of graduating from high school, and only months away from taking my place on the assembly line of death.