“Toews' new genre-bending memoir-an astute reflection on both the significance and the inadequacy of language, a bittersweet and often wry retelling of impactful moments from her life, and a profoundly moving meditation on the frailty of memory and the permanence of loss-is nothing short of a masterpiece . . . Right from the start, A Truce That Is Not Peace reads like a whirling dervish of unbridled longing, bewilderment, sadness, anger, regret and joy that picks you up, swirls you around and doesn't let up until the dance, the storm-and, yes, the journey-is done.” —The San Francisco Chronicle
“Revelatory . . . Like much of Toews' fiction, it is as fluent in the comic register as it is in the tragic . . . This is a grief memoir in the vein of Joan Didion's Blue Nights, or Alexandra Fuller's Fi: written not from the trenches of fresh loss but from the steadier perch of a generation-long hindsight.” —New York Times Book Review
“In this lyrical memoir, Toews explores her writing career with storytelling that is at once propulsive and recursive, using her work as evidence of both her success and her inability to escape her past. It's bracing, candid reading.” —The Los Angeles Times, "30 Must-Read Books for Summer"
“A layered confrontation with the deaths, grief, and guilt that have animated [Toews'] work for nearly 30 years, providing haunting insights on how to live after tragic loss. . . The reader bobs along in the author's stream of consciousness, riding crests of despair, anger, and hilarity as Toews assembles the shards of her past to investigate her will to write, which is deeply entwined with her will to live.” —The Atlantic
“An incandescent read.” —People Magazine, "Best Books of August"
“Unforgettable . . . Using a loose associative structure, Toews brings to light her subconscious, showing how grief tangles itself throughout one's mind, becoming part of its very wiring . . . Toews can't answer the question 'Why do I write?' satisfactorily to the literary event organizer. Instead, she delivers us something far more valuable. A Truce That Is Not Peace is a guttural exhumation of grief that ultimately weighs the joys of living against its sorrows, and tries to figure out why some of us can't endure the math. Formally inventive and exquisitely executed, Toews' memoir shows us that bearing witness to one's own grief-however disjointed, morbid or painful it is-can grant reprieve.” —Bookpage, starred review
“A haunting meditation on writing and death . . . Toews unearths layers of grief in between bouts of profane humor . . . At once modest and profound, this slim volume packs a major punch. Readers will be wowed.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Epistolary at turns, poetic at others, always keenly observant . . . A fine turn to nonfiction by a superbly accomplished storyteller.” —Kirkus Reviews
“The Canadian novelist answers a complicated question - Why do you write? - with this memoir that meditates on memory, creation, and grief as she comes to terms with her sister's suicide. There's nothing simple about grief, or about Toews's writing.” —The Boston Globe
“A memoir in which [Toews] grapples with why she keeps returning to her sister's story, how reliable her memory is and whether she should be writing about this stuff in the first place. All of Toews' books are outstanding but if you have not read her, this could be a great place to start.” —Minnesota Star-Tribune
“A fast-paced, genre-bending examination not of [Toews'] reasons but rather her will to write. In short, sharp bursts of prose that are often both joyful and devastating on the same page, Toews excavates layer after layer of grief and guilt as she explores her uneasy pact with memory.” —Poets and Writers
“[Toews'] voice blends dry humor with profound insight. You will feel this wise woman in the room with you as you read.” —Center for Fiction
“The psychological acuity, imagination, vividness, and wise humor that shape her novels . . . energize Toews' creatively structured, gorgeously written, and flat-out astonishing memoir . . . the reader is whirlwinded by experiences bizarre, comedic, tragic, and wondrous.” —Booklist
“Miriam Toews writes hilariously about the saddest things . . . bringing her trademark wry humor to the page as she excavates her life as a writer, sister, daughter and friend.” —Bookpage
“Beguiling . . . There is intimacy in what Toews is willing to share and in the way she chooses to share it. Reading this memoir is like reading a journal: private, surprising, and vulnerable. 'Why do I write?' the imagined comité asks over and over again before rejecting Toews' answers and, ultimately, her participation at the conference. It's a shame, really. The answer to their question is here - sometimes whispered, sometimes howled. If only they would listen.” —Washington Independent Review of Books
“Toews' latest book pivots on a question: 'Why do you write?' The answer ought to be a layup for a writer on book tour, or at least rehearsed enough by now to sound like it. Of course, it's not that simple. The question and her digressive answers give this slim, eclectic memoir - Toews' first - its motor and shape, as she draws on episodes across her life.” —NPR
“The first time [Toews] has written about her life in nonfiction. The book began when a reader asked her, 'Why do you write?' Each answer felt unsatisfactory, which led her to explore what compels her to write-and what a moving, emotional result.” —Town & Country, "Must-Read Books of Summer"
“Toews is vulnerable with readers in a new way, unpacking her personal tragedies and piecing together the parts of them that led her to become an author. This memoir is an emotional rollercoaster that is certain to strike readers with its honesty.” —Bookstr
“A moving memoir.” —The New York Post
“This small book is bursting with hilariousness and suffering and rage and also so much tenderness that the pages are practically flying off like paper-airplane love letters. I would have read another thousand chapters.” —Catherine Newman, New York Times bestselling author of SANDWICH and WE ALL WANT IMPOSSIBLE THINGS
“Why do I write? Miriam Toews's response to this impossible-to-answer prompt gives way to a haunting, tragi-comic, and incredibly moving inquiry into the landscapes and the people that define us; the parts of life that make no sense; and the things that, against all odds, keep us alive. A Truce That Is Not Peace is essential reading, a smart and wise companion for turbulent times.” —Laura van den Berg, author of STATE OF PARADISE and THE THIRD HOTEL
“Everything written by Miriam Toews is giant-like, full of its own internal humor and strange weather, and A TRUCE THAT IS NOT PEACE is no exception. In trying to begin to answer why she writes, Toews ends by answering why she lives. A beautiful, breathtaking memoir.” —Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award Finalist THE MAN WHO COULD MOVE CLOUDS
“Piercing and distilled, a masterpiece in vulnerability and performance. A Truce That Is Not Peace is a stunner.” —Hannah Pittard, author of WE ARE TOO MANY
“I loved A Truce That Is Not Peace. It is written with such fiery brilliance that the sadness it contains is transformed into an affirmation of Life in all its richness and variety. This remarkable book will live forever.” —Celia Paul, painter and author of SELF-PORTRAIT
“Scorching . . . A wry, freewheeling novel of ideas that touches on the nature of evil, questions of free will, collective responsibility, cultural determinism, and, above all, forgiveness.” —New York Times Book Review, Editor's Choice on international bestseller WOMEN TALKING
“Miriam Toews is wickedly funny and fearlessly honest . . . She is an artist of escape; she always finds a way for her characters, trapped by circumstance, to liberate themselves.” —The New Yorker on international bestseller WOMEN TALKING
“Ardent, hilarious, and moving.” —NPR.org on FIGHT NIGHT
“In the crucible of [Miriam Toews'] genius, tears and laughter are ground into some magical elixir that seems like the essence of life.” —Ron Charles, The Washington Post on ALL MY PUNY SORROWS
2025-05-15
Acclaimed Canadian novelist Toews delivers a sometimes wrenching but often funny memoir.
Does it mean something, Toews wonders, that she dreamed that Mel Gibson ran off with her cell phone just before “someone shot me at close range, in the face”? Perhaps, for, as she reveals in the next breath, she once considered throwing herself into a swift-flowing river, contenting herself in the end by simply throwing her phone into the water instead. Touching on therapy, suicide, family, betrayal, and a dozen other themes, Toews’ narrative—epistolary at turns, poetic at others, always keenly observant—hinges on a recurrent question about the meaning of writing when silence is also a possibility, a question inspired by a writing colloquium whose judges rejected her because, they complained, she responded to the question “Why do I write?” with something more along the lines of “Why am I a writer?” (“Douchebag question either way,” she grumbles; “douchebag” is an oft-repeated word, as when she ventures editorial self-advice: “Let’s set out the douchebag moments in the text and eliminate them.”) It’s not her only writerly disappointment, but for every dark moment there’s a countervailing quip: “I think I’m nuts. I honestly think I need a psychiatrist….Or maybe I just need to drink less coffee.” Although she’s a far cry from Erma Bombeck, Toews does have a lively, memorable way of recounting the travails of modern family life: “Three balls and a diaper are stuck in the Christmas tree branches, too high to reach, and my mother is strung out on oxys, because her trigeminal neuralgia is back.” And speaking of Toews’ mother, an anecdote about her being kidnapped by the unlikeliest of criminals is worth the price of admission all by itself.
A fine turn to nonfiction by a superbly accomplished storyteller.
