Profound Disbelief: Miriam Toews’s Irma Voth

I’m beginning to wonder if Miriam Toews isn’t something of a one-hit wonder. At this point in her career she has completed five novels, including Irma Voth (Knopf Canada, 2011). So far, the only one that has wholly impressed me has been A Complicated Kindness. Toews has a knack for molding vivid characters, except this time she’s gone too far. I struggled to make sense of the title character. On one page Irma does not comprehend simple irony; on the next she is gushing about “excruciating existential dilemmas.” Irma’s background does shed some light into her cryptic character. She was raised in a conservative Mennonite community on the Canadian prairies until her family moved to Mexico several years before the novel opens. In the present tense of the novel, she works as an assistant for a leftist independent filmmaker making a movie about Mexican Mennonites. So given her eclectic background, we might expect her to have a slightly incomprehensible personality. But even though I agree that just because someone is unsophisticated doesn’t make them incapable of sophisticated thought, I don’t think Toews creates a very convincing case for Irma Voth.

There are other points about the plot of Irma Voth that I find equally troubling. The events around Irma’s baby sister, Ximena, are especially incredulous. The centrifugal moment in the plot is when Irma decides to leave her abusive and controlling father and take her younger sister, Aggie, with her. Her mother insists that they also take her newborn baby girl. I know that desperate times can call for desperate measures, but I still find it difficult to believe that a mother would give a one-day-old baby to two resourceless vagabonds running for their lives, even if they are her daughters and her husband is a maniac. I realize I don’t have the range of experience to comprehend what actually motivates these characters’ decisions, but again Toews does not do the novelist’s job of convincing me. My disbelief grew as Irma and Aggie leave their baby sister unattended with various strangers such as an unknown cab driver and a random teenage girl.

The misogynistic elements of the Mennonite lifestyle (at least the one depicted in this novel) will take many readers by surprise. Their way of life may be antiquated, and although some aspects deserve respect, others break my heart. If I had to choose an alternate title for this novel, it would be The Problems of Waking Life (there is a character in the novel who is reading a book of a similar name, but it must be a made-up book – or a true hidden gem – as I can’t locate it anywhere on the Internet). Irma has her fair share of problems. The problems themselves are enough to fill a book, but Irma’s methods for coping with and understanding them are Irma Voth’s main redeeming qualities. Through a notebook that one of the film crew gives her, she begins to validate herself through the written word. For a girl who was raised without mirrors and pictures, it’s amazingly self-affirming to be able to see your words take form on the page. This notebook is critical for Irma’s development and authentication. Particularly in the second half of the novel, we see Irma trying to work through the baggage of her childhood. Using the notebook and the lists and ideas she collects therein, she acquires the gumption to take control of her life, meet new people, get a job, and provide for her sisters.

author Miriam Toews

One of my favorite scenes in the novel is when Irma tries to use a payphone for the first time. She has no clue how it works and an old lady has to show her how to use it. Irma attempts to reach her estranged husband, Jorge, but to no avail. Instead of dissolving into her emotions, Irma says “Well, now I know how a payphone works.” As she turns around from the phone, she meets Jeronimo, who has the name of his ex-wife, Esther, tattooed across his throat. Their conversation reveals that he’s grown to appreciate this name imprinted on his body as a reminder of “this treacherous world.” Unlike other parts of Irma Voth, this scene is elegantly done. Via her own experience and mirrored by the experience of Jeronimo, Irma learns that life teaches lessons in the most convoluted ways. Later, the return to the family homestead at the end of the novel reinforces all the lessons Irma has discovered. She is strong, worldly, and confident enough to respectfully stand up to her father.

Irma Voth is a violent novel – not graphically, but emotionally so. Family is supposed to be about safety, but the safety of domesticity has been perfectly perverted in Irma Voth. Irma takes this to heart, psychologically assuming the responsibility for the deaths of both her sister and her husband. She is legitimately responsible for neither – her sister, Katie, was killed by her father and her husband, Jorge, was killed in a drug-related showdown. It is true that Irma’s decisions may have led to the death of both Katie and Jorge, but does causation imply liability? This is just one of the difficult questions Irma tries to figure out in this modern Bildungsroman.

– Mari-Beth Slade is a marketer for an accounting firm in Halifax. She enjoys hearing new ideas and challenging assumptions. When not hard at work, she appreciates sharing food, wine and conversations with her family and friends.