Irma Voth Paperback – 5 Apr 2012

Irma Voth is a young woman of nineteen; she recently married against her father's wishes, and has even more recently been deserted by her husband, Jorge. Irma lives in northern Mexico, near Chihuahua, and is part of the Mennonite community - a strict religious group which has parallels with the Amish and, like the Amish, is not concerned with material matters or possessions and shuns the modern world of commercialism and consumerism. When a film crew arrives to make a film about the Mennonite community, which angers Irma's father, Irma makes the brave decision to work as a translator for the film director and, in doing so, comes into contact with people who live a very different life to hers.Irma's father, however, is determined to prevent Irma, and more especially Irma's younger sister, thirteen-year-old Aggie, from becoming tainted by the film crew's modern ways and his behaviour towards his daughters becomes even more unreasonable and abusive than normal. After yet another painful confrontation with her father where he threatens to evict Irma from her home and follows this with physically abusing Aggie, Irma realizes that she can no longer put up with his behaviour and decides to make a bid for freedom. Taking Aggie with her and also her baby sister, Irma manages to escape to Mexico City where she feels they will all be safe. But Irma gradually comes to the realization that you cannot escape your past and that to move forward there are some things that must be faced and dealt with.Miriam Toews is, I understand, one of Canada's most celebrated writers; she is also an actress and I would imagine that she has used her experience in the film industry to inform her writing for the first part of this novel; but it was not the first part of the novel that I found the most interesting - it was the second part where Irma struggled to cope with a difficult teenager and a very small baby in a strange city, which was more involving - if not entirely convincing. I found this book a little difficult to rate fairly as I had mixed feelings towards it; it's fresh, quirky, drily humorous and, in some ways, quite compelling, but I can appreciate that not everyone will find this a satisfying read. A friend, who was eager to read this immediately I had finished it, commented that the style of writing was difficult to 'get into', she found the first part of the story slow and she found the short sentences and lack of proper punctuation made for a confusing read. I do understand her reservations but I found that once I had acclimatized to Toews style of writing, this book made for an interesting, original and quite poignant, if not wholly convincing read.3.5 Stars

Irma Voth, the 19 year narrator of this uniquely original novel, starts off by telling us that her husband told her he isn't coming back until she learns to be a better wife. By the time you've finished the first paragraph, I was totally sucked in. I was laughing, and curious, and touched with this girl's innocence. And then on this journey as she develops experience, and courage.Having discovered Miriam Toews thru her novel, The Flying Fruckmans, I was curious about her background. She came from a Mennonite community in Canada. And then, with a few novels under her belt, was 'discovered' via the postage stamp sized author photo of her FACE, by a Mexican filmmaker who wanted to do a film on the Mennonite community.Irma Voth is the love child of that real life experience.Toews is so cool, walks this tightrope of humour and tragedy with such skill, and I wish I could sit down with her and ask her, how much of this is your story. She isn't Irma Voth - her experience as the 40-something female lead is actually a smaller characters - but Irma tells the story with such a great voice. She writes in English, but you really get the voice of the various Mexican characters.. what can I say. Just read it.I'm surprised it isn't a best seller. This would also make an amazing film. These pale blonde blue eyed people in the desert.. the ending is one of the most powerful endings to any novel I've ever read, because we simply don't know what happens next. I found myself, long after I read it, really hoping it's a happy ending.

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Irma Voth is 19-year-old girl living in a Mennonite commune in a Mexican desert. Mennonites is a religious group that rejects all worldly: things of earth are the enemy of heaven. They often migrate, work hard, and avoid contact with non-Mennonites. Irma's father is an imperious man, he keeps cows. Irma's family: her sister Aggie, two little brothers, mother and father - suddenly moved to Mexico from Canada. In Mexico, Irma meets Jorge, a young man who, among other things, stores drugs at the home. After her marriage to Jorge, Irma's father banishes her from the house, separating her to the house with her husband in exchange for that Irma and Jorge would help the father with the cows. Already in the opening scene of the novel we see as Jorge moves away from Irma, accusing her of being a bad wife. Irma on the verge of despair: she does not know how to rectify the situation with my husband. Suddenly, the film crew comes to the desert headed by director Diego, planning to shoot in the desert a film about Mennonites. Diego hires Irma in the group as a translator: she knows three languages, English, Spanish and German dialect spoken by the Mennonites. Irma is the responsibility of explaining to the actress Marijke, a German with Russian roots, in German that is required of her by the director or operator. For the fact that Irma works on strangers from the cast, father and other Mennonites despise and hate her.At first glance it may seem a simple-minded story, but it is actually a multi-layered and fascinating story about eternal values. Toews does this in the first place because she was able to give the main character a unique voice. Irma, both naive and already very experienced, is all the while as if in motion, as well as her thoughts. She's all like the light, but her life has a mystery, and we learn about the death of Irma's sister Katie only in the final. Mennonites are far from the art, and even the arrival of the crew almost does not change anything, because Irma is not involved in the shootings themselves. But the girl herself is artistically by nature. She makes notes in a notebook, in the head plays scenes from the life that can not happen, repeat to herrself fragments of not even books but scraps of letters. And if Irma's sister Aggie quickly and painlessly flowed into the city life, Irma constantly tortures herself by questions and doubts, which made it quite difficult for her to get away from the old life. Irma in the soul is a Mennonite, unearthly, not of this world, but she lives on earth and have to arrange her life under the earth's rules. That's why it's so hard for her, and her diubts bring misfortune to the others.The novel is full of unusual and easy humor, especially in that part of the book where the action takes place with the film crew. The clash of two different cultures always leads to comic results. This does not mean that the book is light-weight. In places it is very dark, because conscience does not let Irma throughout the novel, is she actually guilty of something or just feels guilty.The novel sags a bit after the departure of Irma and her sisters from the desert to the city. The author seemed a bit removed from his character, and we lose the intimacy with the narrator. By the final Toews is very good again: emotions are running high, and Irma will have to make a difficult choice.