All My Puny Sorrows
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| Author | Miriam Toews |
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| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Published | 2014 (Alfred A. Knopf, Canada) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Preceded by | Irma Voth |
All My Puny Sorrows is the sixth novel by Canadian writer Miriam Toews. The novel won the 2014 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2015 Folio Prize for Literature, and the 2015 Wellcome Book Prize. Toews has said that the novel draws heavily on the events leading up to the 2010 suicide of her sister, Marjorie.
The novel recounts the tumultuous relationship of the Von Reisen sisters, Elfrieda and Yolandi, the only children of an intellectual, free-spirited family from a conservative Mennonite community. Yolandi, the novel's narrator, has always lived in her sister's shadow: whereas Elfrieda is a gifted, beautiful, happily married, and much celebrated concert pianist, she is something of a failure, with a floundering writing career and teenage children from separate fathers. Yet it is Elfrieda who suffers from acute depression and a desire to die, much like her father before her, who killed himself by stepping in front of a train. When Elfrieda makes a second suicide attempt on the eve of an international concert tour, Yolandi makes it her mission to save her sister, even as Elf begs her to accompany her to a Swiss clinic and enable her death. Yolandi writes: "She wanted to die and I wanted her to live and we were enemies who loved each other.”
All My Puny Sorrows received starred reviews in Library Journal, Kirkus, and Publisher's Weekly and was a Reference and Users Services Association Notable Book. It also appeared on a number of year-end best-book lists, including The Globe and Mail,The Boston Globe,The Washington Post,The New Republic, and The Daily Telegraph. Reviewing for the New York Times, Curtis Sittenfeld said the novel's "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."Margaret Atwood praised the novel, calling it a "high-wire act": "What do you do when your beloved and brilliant sister wants you to help her leave this world because she finds her existence too painful? How do you make that into a believable, excruciating but sometimes wildly funny work of fiction?"Naomi Klein described the novel as "shockingly funny, deeply wise and utterly heartbreaking."
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