a complicated kindness by Miriam Toews

I love recording excerpts from books. They give me ideas and strength and something concrete to relate to. It used to be that I’d copy things out in my journal or save them as word files. I’m ready to start sharing them in blog-land now.

So here’s one from the book I’m currently reading.
The book is called “a complicated kindness” by Miriam Toews.
I’m really enjoying this book about a teenager trapped in a Mennonite lifestyle just aching to burst out of the ultra-religious microcosm she’s been born into.

Here’s my favourite excerpt.

“There was a little kid, maybe three or four, walking down Main Street by herself with a doll’s stroller strapped to her butt. Every few steps she’d stop and sit down in it for a rest and then get back up and keep walking.

From the back all I could see was the stroller and two little legs. I wondered what she was thinking. I wonder what three-year-olds think. I wonder if somebody had told her she was too big for that stroller. I wonder if she felt the way I did about people who told you something that you knew was just not fuckin’ true and if she felt like screaming at them and hurting them and plunging herself into a chemically induced oblivion.

I admired this kid for keeping her cool. She just strapped herself into that doll stroller and took off walking, probably without a word. All the way down Main Street. She’ll show the whole town that no, in fact, she still fits into the damn stroller.” p. 133

STRAIGHT UP SISTER!