All My Puny Sorrows - Hardcover

NYT 2015 Holiday Gift Guide Selection

A Boston Globe 'Best Fiction of 2014' Pick

A New York Times Editors' Choice pick for the week of November 26, 2014.

Included in the New Republic's Best Fiction of 2014

"I read 'All My Puny Sorrows' very recently and fell in love with Miriam Toews' work. That novel is totally unafraid of the dark wilderness of the mind and heart--seeing as it's a novel largely preoccupied with suicide--and it also somehow manages to be really funny. It felt incredibly alive to me."
--Laura van den Berg, Salon Magazine

"Irresistible... its intelligence, its honesty and, above all, its compassion provide a kind of existential balm--a comfort not unlike the sort you might find by opening a bottle of wine and having a long conversation with (yes, really) a true friend." --Curtis Sittenfeld, The New York Times

"In the crucible of [Miriam Toews'] genius, tears and laughter are ground into some magical elixir that seems like the essence of life." --Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"[A] wrenchingly honest, darkly funny novel. (Grade: A)" --Entertainment Weekly

"Toews is a writer of considerable subtlety and grace, with a gift for bringing flashes of lightness, even humor, to the darkest of tales." --The Millions

"[A] masterful, original investigation into love, loss and survival." --Kirkus (Starred)

"Bold, brash and big-hearted.... Toews writes from the point of view of Yoli, whose interior monologue reads like a cross between David Foster Wallace and Robin Williams if both were, in fact, a 40-something Mennonite woman with authority issues. She's a smart aleck with heart, a philosopher with a comic's timing." --The Dallas Morning News

"[A] triumph in its depiction of the love the sisters share."--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"Toews writes with a sharp and piercing eye, offering characters and descriptions which are so odd and yet so spot-on that the reader has to laugh, albeit reluctantly." --Booklist

"A touching tribute and a captivating novel." --BUST

"Touching and unexpectedly humorous." --Marie Claire

"Toews is an extraordinarily gifted writer, with unsentimental compassion for her people and an honest understanding of their past, the tectonic shifts of their present and variables of their future." --The Globe and Mail

"[Miriam Toews] has a wry, funny voice that is the readers' steady companion. She also has an eye for the absurd and a perfect tragicomedic timing in delivery." --Christian Century

"It requires a talented author to take a serious subject and write such an engaging, enjoyable work.--Library Journal (starred)

"Heartbreaking" --Bustle

"[A] sad, wise, often funny and very good novel." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"'All My Puny Sorrows' is a bittersweet story about those who survive and those who can't fight the current." --Minneapolis StarTribune

"Funny and irresistibly warm" --BuzzFeed

"Toews infuses [All My Puny Sorrows] with humor and sympathy."
--John Williams, NY1, The Book Reader

"A harrowing and often very funny novel ... Every page yields a surprise, a laugh, or a line that will make your breath catch in your throat." --Dan Kois, Slate

"Thanks to the prodigious talent of author Miriam Toews, 'All My Puny Sorrows' is an off-kilter, frequently funny and begrudgingly life-affirming romp through, well, death." --The Los Angeles Times

"As jagged and ripped open as a freshly torn heart." --The Boston Globe

"Fitful and seething" --The Rumpus

"Both funny and heartbreaking, this semi-autobiographical novel was the bravest book I read this year." --Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"Soul-crushingly beautiful." --The Oregonian

"'All My Puny Sorrows, ' by Miriam Toews, is the book that etched itself most deeply inside me this year, and I feel certain will become a lifelong companion. ... Underneath the stunning writing and outrageous humor are insights -- wise and profound -- that test the boundaries of human rights and stretch the borders of love." --Naomi Klein, San Francisco Chronicle

"A touching examination of loss, of family, of life itself. ... an exquisite, lasting elegy." --The Seattle Times

"Toews is truly distinct, hilarious even when she's dealing with the most heartbreaking and bleak of subjects." --The New Republic

Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfrieda's life is enviable (she's a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, and happily married) and Yolandi's a mess (she's divorced and broke, with two teenagers growing up too quickly), they are fiercely close — raised in a Mennonite household and sharing the hardship of Elf's desire to end her life. After Elf's latest attempt, Yoli must quickly determine how to keep her family from falling apart, how to keep her own heart from breaking, and what it means to love someone who wants to die.

All My Puny Sorrows is the latest novel from Miriam Toews, one of Canada's most beloved authors — not only because her work is rich with deep human feeling and compassion but because her observations are knife-sharp and her books wickedly funny. And this is Toews at her finest: a story that is as much a comedy as it is a tragedy, a goodbye grin from the friend who taught you how to live.