Swing Low: A Life

““There are no windows within the dark house of depression through which to see others, only mirrors.”

The author pulls off a daring thing here- she approaches this family memoir, by writing in the first person, from her beloved father’s point of view. Even more of a challenge is the fact that her father is in the hospital, battling manic depression, while he reflects on his troubled life. Somehow it works beautifully and Toews captures the spirit of this man with love and grace. A one-of-a-kind book.

Swing Low is an unusual book in that it's a first-person memoir written by the narrator's daughter. Renowned Canadian author Miriam Toews grew up in small town Manitoba where her father was a popular school teacher. Outside of school, unfortunately, he was a sick man and struggled with bipolar disorder and eventually committed suicide. Toew's book honours his life and struggle.

I admit that I had trouble getting into the book at first. It seemed an aimless string of bits about his mental confusion, interspersed with bits about him hassling the nurses at the hospital. I was rather annoyed because I couldn't see where it was going, and couldn't figure out how the book earned so many 4-and 5-star reader reviews. But then it clicked, and I show more was entranced. Toews writes simple stories, vignettes, really, that put together tell the story of a kind, gentle, but very ill man. Her writing isn't fancy or show offy (in honour of her father's simple Mennonite traditions, perhaps?), but every page is filled with clarity and beauty. And sadness.

Note: her more recent novel, My Puny Sorrows, was influenced by her sister's suicide, which happened years after Swing Low was published. So much sadness. show less

I have read other books by Miriam Toews and thought they were exceptional especially All My Puny Sorrows. When I read about this book which is a loving tribute to her father I knew I wanted to read it so it has been on the TBR pile for some time. Mel Toews was diagnosed with bipolar at the age of 17 and medicated thereafter but perhaps treatment in small town Manitoba was not the best!. He was an accomplished teacher, community member and a devoted church goer however he had frequent and severe bouts of depression that greatly impacted his life and relationships. There is a great deal of personal family history described from living in a small and tight Mennonite community. Miriam Toews wrote this intimate book from copious notes her show more father had left trying to sort through his challenges. Miriam Toews is such a good writer!

For me it is a bit of a strange image on the cover of the book as young Mel Toews worked hard for his father's egg business which he hated doing, so while the image might reflect for some new life/goodness/nourishment, it was really the worst image for young Mel Toews and really meant an obligation and duty to his family which was a struggle for him. So I don't understand the thinking behind the cover choice!

In November 2016 Toews was awarded $ 50,000 from the Writer's Trust Fellowship. CBC reporting about this award said.....
"Toews is known for her moving, poetic novels that explore the complicated binds of family life, infused with a hilarity that often ensues from tragedy.........Toews is the second Canadian writer to receive the prestigious award. The Writers' Trust plans to award three fellows over a period of three years in the run-up to Canada's 150th birthday in 2017. The inaugural recipient, named in 2015, was Michael Crummey, author of Sweetland and Little Dogs." show less

My copy of "Swing Low" has lots of sticky notes in it, marking the pages that really made an impact on me. Miriam Toews's father had a very troubled life that ended very sadly and I suspect Toews wrote this book to try to come to terms with that tragedy. Her father has a diagnosed mental illness, but his behaviour was not unlike my own. I'm not sure what this says about me

Let me just say … I did not enjoy Irma Voth – the fiction novel that Miriam Toews wrote and I reviewed just a few weeks ago. So it was with some trepidation that I picked Swing Low up off my shelf.

I was blown away.

Seriously, this book was nothing at all like Irma Voth. It was clear, concise, and a beautiful tribute to her father. Miriam’s voice, as she speaks from her father’s point of view, is crystal clear, heart-breaking and filled with love. I never once got the sense that he was, in any way shape or form, a bad man. I understood that he was sick, broken in a way, I understood that he loved his family – his wife and his children, and I wept when we came to the point of his last decision.

All through the book what spoke show more loudest to me was his daughters forgiveness. Miriam shows with complete clarity that, while she loved her father dearly, she cannot hate him for what he did. How powerful is that forgiveness? It spoke to my heart, it made me weep, it made me appreciate my own parents more and think about just how serious, how dreadful and how dangerous mental disorders can be.

Take the time to hug your family. Tell them you love them. Read this book if you need a good kick in the pants to remind you of how special they are. show less

I adored Miriam Toews' "A Complicated Kindness" and the movie that was made from her book "The Flying Troutmans", so I was interested to read this book, which is a biography of her father written from his first person perspective. Not the usual biography. He took his own life in his early 60's after a lifetime of living with bipolar disorder. Towards the end he was hospitalized and during this period he found it helpful to recall episodes from his past, which his daughter wrote down. After his death, she found writing his story from his point of view helped her make sense of his suicide. It's quite an amazing read. Intimate, sad, funny, human.

This is an admirable, I'd even say a noble, project from Toews--a gesture to making pain make sense, a (Hail-Mary) push to find peace and sense on the other side of horror through words. And when I think about how hard I'd find it to delve into the places she does--her project is a biography of her father, imagined writing from his hospital bed after a series of confusing and debilitating strokes--I'm inclined to forgive the places where she backs away, seemingly lets the public (or family) man stand in for the private (although a weirdly proper, conservative, manic-depressive small-town Mennonite like Mel Toews, you wonder if even were he writing to himself that's the persona he's inhabit anyway. In some ways I guess it's easier to cut show more to the truth about people in the third person--we are always self-representing). So it's not that I find this unworthy--it's more just the dolorous arithmetic of how many hours I've already spent reading stories about Mennonites from small towns on the Canadian prairies divided by how many hours I've spent reading in a ratio to how much interest I have in reading about Mennonites from small towns on the Canadian prairies versus all life's other wonders. It's not Toews's fault, and I'm aware every other literature has this disease too to a greater or lesser degree--and even more so when you live somewhere, because then you get the official culture or language arts-curriculum version of a tradition, and the small town on the prairies is safely realist, ungarish, uncontroversial--but I blame my lowish rating of this book on Canadian literature's refusal to branch out a little. show less