Irma Voth

A Novel

By: Miriam Toews

Narrated by: Erin Moon

A treasure of Canadian letters, Miriam Toews has earned numerous awards. With Irma Voth, Toews delivers a witty novel of great humanity and emotional poignancy.

Cast from her Mennonite family for marrying a Mexican man she barely knows, 19-year-old Irma finds herself in an untenable situation. But when a film crew arrives to document her insular community, Irma begins a remarkable journey to redemption and discovering all she may become.

©2011 Miriam Toews (P)2011 Recorded Books, LLC

In my opinion, not Toews best.

Would you try another book from Miriam Toews and/or Erin Moon?

I love Miriam Toews and I love Erin Moon but Irma was too immature for me to "get." But since Moon's reading of Toews' All My Puny Sorrows was one of my favorite books, I'll be back for more. Of course, I don't really know what girls and women from Mennonite families sound like but Erin Moon adds to the sympathetic look that Toews provides and until Irma in this third book that I've listened to, I was really engaged by each character to whom I was introduced.

Getting it right.

So much about this book gets it right. Miriam Toews speaks my language. She's one of those writers that says it the way folks are thinking and feeling it without knowing it until she articulates it for them and they go, "ya!" "No kidding!" "Ah...." The audiobook is great in many ways but...Menno Simons is pronounced like the first name Simon not Simmons and low German is pronounced with the accent on the low not the 'ger' in German. When reading a book all about a certain culture it seems important to get it right!

Emotional to the core

Brilliant writing! Unforgettably intense. Could not stop listening. So enveloped in the story, you want to know how it continues.

Not inspiring

Overall kind of meh. Rambling, disjointed and disconnected from reality-especially the ease at which two young girls and a baby easily find a job, a place to stay and a comfortable life when landing in a crowded city knowing no one and having very little in the way of money. The back and forth between Irma and little sister Aggie gets tiresome.

Humour

Narrator was sooo good! She did all the voices so well! She brought out humour I missed on written page.