Elf is a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, happily married: she wants
to die. Yoli is divorced, broke, sleeping with the wrong men: she desperately wa
nts to keep her older sister alive. When Elf's latest suicide attempt leaves her
hospitalised weeks before her highly anticipated world tour, Yoli is forced to
confront the impossible question of whether it is better to let a loved one go.
Miriam Toews' All My Puny Sorrows, at once tender and unquiet, offers a profo
und reflection on the limits of love, and the sometimes unimaginable challenges
we experience when childhood becomes a new country of adult commitments and resp
onsibilities. "The novel she has written - so exquisitely that you'll want to sa
vour every word - reads as if it has been wrenched from her heart." (Christina P
atterson, Sunday Times). "[Miriam Toews] has produced a masterly book of such pr
ecise dignity.
