All My Puny Sorrows

This should be a far more harrowing read. Yolandi is supplanted from her Toronto home to icy Winnipeg after a suicide attempt by her sister, following in the footsteps of their own father who took his own life by stepping in front of a train. Yo is separated from her children including a teenaged daughter relishing her unsupervised freedom and her new Swedish boyfriend - who later calls in to report an infestation of carpenter ants. She's in the midst of a divorce, questions her less than engaged string of assignations, her stalled career and money woes. Her aunt takes a turn and is soon hospitalized. Hardly sounds like light fare. Even more depressing is the fact that Mirriam Toews lost her own father and only sister to suicide.

But it's a lovely read and unabashedly Canadian - dropping two-fours, double-doubles, Players Extra Light, Northrope Frye, Margaret Laurence, Neil Young and Nellie McClung. It doesn't uplift through a notion of “I thought I had it bad” comparisons but rather through the weary optimism we Canadians are known for. The idea of being “as Canadian as possible, under the circumstances.”