This book was interesting, and I am not a religious person, but do know many Mennonites. I am not sure if this was an accurate/fair portrayal of the religion I'm very familiar with. However, this was an interesting read and I would recommend it.

I first heard about <b>Women Talking</b> from Russell on Ink and Paper blog. It is a story about a group of Mennonite women who come together after they discover that their nightly attacks have been committed by men that they call family and friend. While the other men have gone to bail out the perpetrators, the women have short time to decide their futures. They have three options on the table: to stay and do nothing, to stay and fight or to leave. It is not an easy decision as they live far removed from society. The women are illiterate and speak a language not known outside their community. To add to this their religion dictates that they must forgive and be forgiven in order to be accepted into heaven. These are not simple quandaries. With sparse prose and keen insight Toews explores their dilemma. <b>Women Talking</b> is a heart wrenching story yet a hopeful one as the oppressed come together to reclaim their power.

Where to start? This is a unique and tiny time capsule in the life of this group of Mennonite women. They have been trying to make up their minds about some decisions about their lives after months of having been drugged and sexually violated by male members of their patriarchal community. They have been dominated all their lives by men-forbidden to go to school or learn to read. They have no say in their community, but plenty to say amongst themselves.
Eight of the women meet over two evenings while the men are away and discuss their options. Should they leave, stay and acquiesce, or stay and fight the men. Their meetings make up the near entirety of the book. The conversations amongst themselves are lively and entertaining, but certainly the reality of disparate women unleashed to discuss a topic candidly. The one variable here is that they aren’t alone. They have enlisted the help of the male schoolteacher to take minutes which they have no ability to read.
I found the topic of this book interesting, yet in reality it didn’t live up to my expectations. The women were victims, yet some seemed willing to accept their role as pawns to the men in the community. They often came off as petty and self-righteous among themselves, and were constantly driven off track by minor irritations and random comments. I was surprised to find that I was more accepting of their indulgences as I read on. It was interesting how much I could get to know and appreciate the characters of these women just through these two evenings. I found myself caring about their choices and outcome by the end of the book after being more than a bit exasperated at the start.
The real wild card in this book was the character of August, the teacher, and his role as secretary for the women and narrator of the story. It is obvious that he has an affinity for one of the women that seems mutual. The other women either find him to be sympathetic or at least tolerable. Several times they ask him for his opinion or allow him to share a comment. Still, he is one of the men, and as such has no part in their decision. The author’s placement of him in this role seems a bit of a paradox.
Interestingly, this story is based on a real event. The author does seem to have a purpose behind her version the story. It made me think and will probably stay with me awhile. If for no other reason, I liked the book and would give it 3.5 stars.
I hesitate to recommend this title to everyone. I think it’s for a select audience of readers who enjoy books that make them look at things in a different way. It might work for certain book clubs, but will probably be a “did not finish” for many readers. I would suggest that anyone who gives it a try commit to persevering through to the end. You won’t find it to be a climactic one, but you won’t get the full flavor of the writing without finishing. It is absolutely not a book for action or thrill oriented readers!
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this title.

I was excited to start this book. Firstly, because it has been favorably compared to another favorite of mine, The Handmaid’s Tale. (Although, to be frank, what book isn’t being compared to that nowadays, right?) It also has a very nice quote from Margaret Atwood herself, so I felt it important to read this book.

It is a fictionalized account based on a real events that occurred in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia a number of years ago. The book is a set of conversations. There is no real action, it is all talk. This screwed with my expectations a little. After that description I was expecting something to … happen I guess. Once I realized the book was going to be confined to this one meeting I tried to adjust my expectations and keep going. Unfortunately, it kept on in the same vein for its entirety. It is mostly philosophical debates among the woman in regards to the choice they need to make about how to deal with this situation and their religious beliefs. Here is where it lost me. I hate philosophy books. I took a class last year in philosophy and it was like torture. So this book did not work for me at all.

If you like philosophy, especially about religious doctrine, then this book will appeal to you. I don’t feel like the description did anything to promote the book. I was expecting a completely different book, and I was never able to fully divorce myself from my disappointment at not getting that story told. It’s too bad. I wanted to like this book. It’s just not for me.

This novel wasn’t for me, and I’m disappointed because I was really excited to read it. This story is based on a real-life event; women in a Mennonite colony in Bolivia were repeatedly drugged and raped by a group of men from their own community — and nothing was done to help them.

In an effort to defend themselves, the colony’s women gathered in a clandestine meeting to determine whether they should leave the colony, or stay. Based on the synopsis of this book, I was geared up for an empowering and feminist novel in which women debated the pros and cons of leaving or staying, and created a furtive but powerful plan to do either. I thought this novel was going to be an insightful retelling of these events from the point-of-view of a woman who lived in the colony. Instead, the novel was told through the point-of-view of a man — August — who was an excommunicated member of the colony, brought back to be a teacher (for the boys). August could read and write while the women in the colony could not, so they asked him to take the minutes of their meeting.

I believe that Toews’ use of a male narrator was to highlight the dependency of women in the colony on the male figures. I believe she was trying to portray for the reader just how misogynistic and patriarchal this colony is. Unfortunately – this didn’t work for me. I felt no attachment to August, I didn’t care about his backstory, and I thought his interjections into the women’s conversation were annoying and pompous. I really think that this novel would have worked better through the perspective of one of the women who lived through these attacks. August, obviously, was not one of the sexual assault victims, and as he was a character a degree removed from the actual attacks, I was a reader removed from the overarching issues at hand. I felt detached from the characters and the horrors they experienced.

Additionally, as this novel is about a community meeting, it’s heavy in dialogue, which is to be expected — but the conversations were so philosophical in nature that I quickly became bored, and hoped that the meeting would become more action oriented. Eventually it moved in that direction, but at that point I was tuned out.

Toews’ writing style is easy to follow, and she’s clearly a thoughtful writer with interesting ideas — but this one missed its mark for me.

A foreword at the beginning of Miriam Toews devastating and infuriating novel, Women Talking, explains that the plot is based on a true story. Between 2005 and 2009, hundreds of women in a Bolivian Mennonite community were drugged, abused, and raped. Eight men were eventually caught, tried, and sentenced for the crimes. Women Talking takes place over two days while some of the women hold a meeting to decide what they should do before their attackers return to the community while they are out on bail.

The novel is narrated by August Epps, who takes minutes for the meeting because all of the women and girls at the Molotschna community are illiterate. These women and girls have been through horrors and are still being victimized by the leaders (all men) of their colony. Over the course of the meeting, we learn that the Bolivian government only got involved because the bishop, Peters, was forced to call them in…to protect the accused from attacks by their victims. The men were only charged and jailed because it was safer for them. The women and girls have received no medical care except for some stolen animal antibiotics. All offers of counseling have been rejected by the bishop. Now, the women have been told that, in order to remain members of the colony, they must forgive their attackers and allow these men back into their community. If they cannot forgive, they will be excommunicated and exiles.

The meeting is called to decide what the women will do. Will they leave because they cannot forgive? Or will they stay and say they have forgiven their attackers? These questions are complicated by a host of issues the women have with their community and religion. At one point, they wonder if they are considered humans or animals by the men. At another point, they wonder about the state of their souls because so many of them cannot forgive and forget the way the Bishop and the other men (not the attackers) want them to. August adds some asides for context and his own views when the women ask what he thinks. These asides and tangents served to remind me that these women have been silenced in so many ways. They cannot even record their thoughts without a man to document them. No matter how sympathetic August may be, he still interprets, translates, and corrects what the women say; we don’t hear them directly.

Women Talking is a microcosm of so many things: misogyny, power and autonomy, language, faith, post-traumatic stress disorder, reconciliation and forgiveness, inequality, injustice, lack of empathy, repeated victimization, sexuality, recovery. This book may be impossible for some readers because of its contents and because it is based on real events. For readers who do take it on, it is a profound shout from women who are not truly heard by the men in their community, who are not believed by those men, and who may never see any kind of justice. My heart is still bleeding from what I read.

It has taken a few days for the impact of this story to fully hit me. The women in the story are meeting to decide their future after a horrific situation in which some of the men in their remote Mennonite village raped most of the women and even children in the village and then tried to make them believe it was the work of demons. The book takes place over two days, and through the conversations which ensue we get to know the women and their feelings about their situation. They have not been allowed to learn to read or write, they exist solely to serve their husbands and keep their houses, they have only two days before the men return and must decide if they should stay and do nothing or stay and fight or leave. None of these choices are easy and none of them seem even remotely possible. The fact that they actually manage to make a decision and begin to carry out a plan by the book’s end feels like a huge accomplishment. These women are talking about important things - religion and freedom and power and forgiveness - and their discussion is interrupted by the realities of their immediate lives - eating and feeding their children, taking care of their livestock, checking on the elderly in the village - we get to know these women and we are rooting for them to be able to make a decision which will move them toward a better life and some form of healing.

My Canadian reviewer ended up sending a review because the book was already out there (our magazine is binational); this is her review: For two days in 2009, eight women in a Mennonite colony hold a clandestine meeting in the hayloft of a local farmer’s barn. Present also is August Epp, a man who, along with his parents, had been excommunicated from the colony when he was a boy and had recently been given permission to return.
The group, three generations of women from two families, represented the women in the colony and had gathered to make a perilous decision. One of the women asked August to take the minutes of the meeting, though all of the women were illiterate and wouldn’t be able to read what he wrote.
As the women interact—discussing, praying, laughing, singing, arguing, crying, ranting, and consoling—their stories and those of other women in the colony emerge. Between 2005 and 2009, hundreds of girls and women had been sexually assaulted. Eight men had been arrested and brought to a city jail.
Meanwhile, the other men in the colony have gone to the city to post bail and bring the men home. The colony’s bishop, Peters, had told the women that if they would forgive the men upon their return, the women would be guaranteed a place in heaven. If they refuse to do so, they would have to leave the colony.
The women’s heartrending, fascinating, complex discussion—not theoretical or abstract, but distressingly practical and profoundly relevant—reveals the truth that their safety and very lives hang in the balance. They must decide: Will they stay and fight, or will they leave?
This novel for adults offers readers a window into a world of voiceless women who find their voices as they live “in the crucible of this crushing experiment”—a colony for the most part cut off from the world.
Based on true events, Women Talking is a powerful testament to the yearning for justice evident in those who are oppressed. Though the subject matter is painful and harrowing, author Miriam Toews doesn’t include graphic details. The book concludes on a surprising, authentically grace-filled note. (Knopf Canada; available in the U.S. in April 2019.)

This is an odd book to try and review and I’m not sure how I really felt about it. A few parts punched me in the gut, and the entire premise is horrific, but this is less of a novel and more of an extended philosophical debate on religion and belief. It wasn’t my cup of tea but can see the appeal for some readers.

If you liked Vox or The Handmaid's Tale, you will like this book - which is a fictional response to true crimes against Mennonite women in Bolivia. The women were drugged and raped, but told that they were attacked by the devil. Towes book follows a meeting of the women, who can't read or write, as they decide how to respond to the attacks. Very powerful characters. There is violence against children and girls referenced, which is disturbing - but not graphic. These women have three choices: 1: Do Nothing, 2: Fight the men or 3. Leave. They grapple with deciding their response, while staying true to their religious belief and protecting their children. A portrait of the powerless taking control of their story.

I will not be posting a review on my blog as I was unable to finish this book and the review would be pretty abysmal.

I gave up reading this around 50% due to several issues with the writing.

Most of these issues revolve around the author's choice of protagonist. This is a story about women's issues and women's victimization filtered through a male protagonist. In-universe, the reason for this is because the women are illiterate and the story is told in the form of the minutes of their meeting wherein they decide how to proceed as a group. They needed a trust man to take notes for them.

There are two separate issues with this choice for me. First is that is simply doesn't work well, artistically speaking. The writing style is rather rudimentary due to the education level of the character who is taking the notes. This doesn't make for a remotely immersive or engaging reading experience. Secondly, there is no reason for the story to be told in this medium at all, and choosing literally any other POV character (by telling the story in a form other than meeting minutes) would allow this fundamentally female story to be told from the POV as a woman. This makes more sense for a purportedly feminist story and would also sidestep the rudimentary writing skills of the existing narrator.

Overall, this story had a ton of potential and it just fell woefully flat for me. I read several books per week and had been working on this relatively short novel for several weeks without finishing before I realized it's simply not for me.

Miriam Toews pulled off a difficult task by creating a male character, August, to have such a large role in this novel about women who were repeatedly raped after being drugged at night in a remote Mennonite colony Bolivia between 2005 and 2009, a horrific true story that was in the news years ago. The women were illiterate, so they were unsure how to leave the colony. The men who raped them will be freed from jail in a few nights, and the woman need to decide if they should fight back, which, challenges their pacifism, stay and raise their families, which means with the men who have drugged and raped them for years, and who to take with them if they leave. Do they take older boys who have already been ruined by their involvement?

The philosophical conversations are enlightening. How do they honor a Bible they can't even read. They now question what is in this book where women ended up raped for years by their religious leaders and members of their own families. To some degree, this novel reminded me of Gilman's "Herland," the women tired of misogyny create their own society, something these women are questioning, but they don't know what exists beyond their colony, and if the rest of the world will be the same.

This is a relatively fast-paced novel deep in thought.

A horrifying, based-on-a-true-story addition to the growing body of #MeToo literature.

** Trigger warning for violence against girls, women, and children, including rape. **

“We won’t have to leave the people we love? says Neitje. Greta points out that the women could bring loved ones with them. Others question the practicality of this, and Ona mentions, gently, that several of the people we love are people we also fear.”

“Salome continues to shout: She will destroy any living thing that harms her child, she will tear it from limb to limb, she will desecrate its body and she will bury it alive. She will challenge God on the spot to strike her dead if she has sinned by protecting her child from evil, and furthermore by destroying the evil that it may not harm another. She will lie, she will hunt, she will kill and she will dance on graves and burn forever in hell before she allows another man to satisfy his violent urges with the body of her three-year-old child.”

“Mariche can contain herself no longer. She accuses Ona of being a dreamer. We are women without a voice, Ona states calmly. We are women out of time and place, without even the language of the country we reside in. We are Mennonites without a homeland. We have nothing to return to, and even the animals of Molotschna are safer in their homes than we women are. All we women have are our dreams— so of course we are dreamers.”

Between 2005 and 2009, a group of nine men raped hundreds of women, girls, and children in an isolated Bolivian Mennonite settlement called Manitoba Colony. In many cases, the men – fellow believers and members of the community – were related to the victims, who were their sisters, cousins, aunts, nieces, etc. Using belladonna procured from a veterinarian in a neighboring Mennonite colony, the men blew the sedative through doors and windows, incapacitating entire households, and then spent the night assaulting their victims, alone or in groups. Victims would wake up sore and bruised, sometimes with dirt, blood, and semen staining their sheets, or with grass in their hair. Many of the victims had no memory of the assault, while others recalled the night’s events in fragments and flashes.

Though many of the women and children were reluctant to recount their experiences (the children, especially, lacked words with which to describe what had been done to them), the sisters – Mennonites refer to all members of the community as “sisters” and “brothers” – began to whisper amongst themselves. Word spread, as it always does. The leaders of Manitoba Colony – men, them all – dismissed the women’s experiences as “wild female imagination,” or punishment wrought down by God or Satan for unnamed sins. The perpetrators were given otherworldly origins: they were demons and ghosts, whose manifestations for which the women were ultimately responsible. Or the women were simply lying, either to cover up adultery or for attention.

The rape ring was finally uncovered when two men were caught trying to break into a neighbor’s home in June of 2009. They gave up a few of their friends, and so on, until nine men – between the ages of 19 and 43 – were implicated. The trial took place in 2011; the rapists were sentenced to 25 years apiece, while the veterinarian who supplied the drug got 12 years. Officially, 130 victims were identified during the trial, but the number is likely much higher. The case shone a light on domestic violence and sexual assault in conservative, insulated Mennonite colonies. Indeed, in a follow-up visit to Manitoba Colony for Vice in 2013, journalist Jean Friedman-Rudovsky discovered evidence that the mass rapes are still happening. (Google “The Ghost Rapes of Bolivia” to see the report, as well as a two-part documentary available on YouTube.)

The fact that the case even went to trial is remarkable in itself. While Mennonites, like all religious groups, have various factions and adherents ranging from liberal to more conservative, the Manitoba Colony is on the extreme end of the spectrum. Mennonites have their origins in 16th century Netherlands; due to religious persecution, its converts spread around the globe over the intervening centuries. Named after the Canadian province they fled in the early 1900s, the Manitoba Colony eventually settled in Bolivia thanks to an agreement with the country, that they would be largely autonomous and free to govern themselves. In terms of law enforcement, except in cases of murder, the Manitobans are free to handle crime as they see fit.

Manitoba leadership only turned the rapists over to the Bolivian government for their own safety: they were afraid that, if the men remained in the colony, they would be killed by the victims’ male relatives. With no police force or judicial system, local ministers “investigate” and mete out punishment for wrongdoing. Unsurprisingly, crimes of this nature largely go unpunished and tend to reoccur.

Enter Miriam Toews’s WOMEN TALKING, which the author somewhat cheekily describes as “both a reaction through fiction to these real events, and an act of female imagination.” (Burn.) In this reimagining of events, the rapists were indeed turned over to the Bolivian government (in this case, it was because of Salome with a scythe, vs. men with pitchforks, which I love). However, the colony’s remaining men, having had a change of heart, have traveled to the nearest city to post bail for their brothers. (This plot hole is my only issue with the story: why bring the accused back to await the trail date when they were sent away for their own safety? Is it because they recanted their confessions?)

The women have two days before they return, rapists in tow. Two days to decide what their response should be.

They have three options, as they see it:
1. Do nothing.
2. Stay and fight.
3. Leave.

And so eight women climb into a disused hay loft for a surreptitious meeting/debate. Eight women, and one man to record the minutes – because women, only schooled to the age of twelve, are not taught to read or write. Luckily, the man is sympathetic to their plight, and a bit of a rebel/outcast himself. A group of sisters who have already thrown their caps into the do-nothing camp? Not so much.

Don’t get me wrong; WOMEN TALKING is not heavy on action. While I’d argue that it is suspenseful, the tension is understated: what will the women do to defend themselves, if anything?

There’s a lot of talking in this book: as another reviewer noted, it's right there in the title. it’s right in the title. And probably this isn’t everybody’s thing. But I was on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. And, when it was over, I spent a few more hours reading about the case online. It’s horrifying, not just in the sheer scope of abuse, but in the bizarre stories used to explain it away. (Rape apologism on LSD.) Perhaps most horrifying is how completely the women were – are – trapped by circumstance, as becomes evident as the narrative unfolds.

Not only are the women illiterate (by design), thus unable to read a map; they have no idea where they live in relation to the outside world. Their colony is remote and they have only horses and buggies for travel. They speak only Low German in a Latin American country. Leaving is difficult, while fighting arguably goes against their pacifist beliefs. But staying and continuing to endure the abuse? Being forced under threat of excommunication to forgive their rapists? Unthinkable.

What is their duty to God? To the patriarchs of their colony? To their community? To their faith? To their children? To themselves?

As I devoured the book, I found myself wondering just how much of it is true, and what is merely artistic embellishment? As it turns out, most of the more outrageous details are fact. The youngest victim was a three-year-old toddler (though it’s unclear if she actually contracted an STD, as Miep did in the book). The women were denied counseling by the colony elders, on the reasoning that, if they were unconscious and unaware during the attacks, what harm could it have done? (In fact, Low German-speaking counselors volunteered to visit the colony and work with survivors, free of cost; colony leaders turned them away without so much as mentioning it to the women.) The women were “encouraged” to forgive their attackers; if they failed to do so, they received a personal visit from Bishop Neurdorf, “Manitoba’s highest authority.”

An especially appalling detail, not mentioned by Toews: Old Mennonite women are not allowed to testify (nor vote, hold office, etc.). At the trial, the victims’ male relatives had to offer testimony on their behalf. Women were not allowed to speak of the violence inflicted on them – not even at the trial of their oppressors.

So as bad as WOMEN TALKING is, I have to believe that the reality is so very much worse. Especially since the hayloft meeting – the most hopeful part of the book – is a flight of the female imagination, so to speak.

Also, Toews spent the first eighteen years of her life in a Mennonite community, so I’ve got to trust that she knows that of which she writes.

While it’s tempting to blame the mass rapes on the Mennonite religion – and, indeed, the patriarchal power structure, fear of outsiders, and physical and linguistic isolation of the colony certainly contributed to the sheer scope and longevity of the crimes – rape is … everywhere. As I write this review, a NYT piece just broke a scandal involving the systemic rape of nuns by priests, who then forced their victims to abort the resulting pregnancies (just proving that their opposition to abortion is less about babies and more about power over and control of female bodies). There’s even a great moment when Mejal “not all men”s the proceedings – to which Ona replies: “Perhaps not men, per se, but a pernicious ideology that has been allowed to take hold of men’s hearts and minds.”

Anywhere that women (or girls, or boys, or LGBTQ people, or the disabled, or POC, etc.) are dehumanized, objectified, and othered; anywhere that one group is given total or near-total power over others; anywhere there is inequality and certain segments of the population are marginalized, discriminated against, and disbelieved, there will be rape. Whether it’s an isolated Mennonite colony in eastern Bolivia, or a college dorm room in Columbus, Ohio. In the office of a powerful Hollywood producer or the Oval Office.
The question becomes, what are we – you and I – going to do about it?

There’s nowhere to flee, and “nothing” has been the status quo for far too long.

The acknowledgements to award-winning novelist Toews’ latest, short work of fiction include the following statement: ‘I wish to acknowledge the girls and women in patriarchal, authoritarian (Mennonite and non-Mennonite) communities across the globe. Love and solidarity.’

Read her book – with its deft, brief title that can be read as disparagement or description – and you will swiftly understand why. The novel springs out of real events which took place between 2005 and 2009 in a remote Mennonite colony in Bolivia, where hundreds of girls and women would wake up drowsy, bleeding and in pain each morning. They were called devils by their (male) elders, blamed, accused. But later, the truth emerged, that men from their communities had been drugging and attacking them at night. Eight men were convicted in a Bolivian court in 2011 and given long prison sentences. But in 2013, similar assaults and abuses were still taking place in the colony.

On this ghastly foundation, Toews builds a tale which takes the form of a debate among a group of women, in a colony named Molotschna, about how they should respond to their rapes. The minutes of their conversation are recorded by a man – August, a teacher and the son of disgraced members of the colony, blameless in the attacks – whom they have invited to take notes. The women themselves cannot read or write, have never been anywhere, know nothing about the world, maps, art, the sea, technology. They are treated – they agree – as animals by the men who even at a young age command their existences. Their sons, once over the age of fifteen, have dominion over them.

Not all the women join the debate. Some accept the strict patriarchal conditions of their lives. But eight women, of varying ages and temperaments, are no longer able to tolerate the facts or implications of what has happened to them. Foremost is Ona, unmarried, but now pregnant after her own rape, who displays both sharp intelligence and warmth. August, a man whose history is far from domineering – his parents were cast out of the colony; he has been imprisoned; he harbors suicidal thoughts – is in love with her.

The women’s analysis of what has happened to them, their treatment, their own futures and their children’s, and above all how to absorb these events into their own sense of faith, fills most of the book’s pages, and might seem at times dry. But its territory is so horrific, so stark, so outrageous and contemporary that it magnetizes the reader. Toew’s sensitivity, lucidity, lyricism and wit ensure it.

August scribbles fast to keep up with their discussion, their efforts to decide – collectively – whether to stay or leave. Time is short, the men are away in town, raising money to bail out their brethren accused of the crimes. The tale becomes almost thriller-esque as the clock ticks down on the women’s freedom to meet, talk and act.

Compassion and comprehension crowd together as August stands in the hayloft, absorbing what he has witnessed and the feelings that remain. He also shares a late item which lays open the deep, pervasive nature of hypocrisy within the supposedly devout community. This last section of the novel, poetic and brave, leaves the reader quietly stunned.

Synthesizing complex and ancient arguments which also have bang-up-to-the-minute relevance, the book offers a crisp, immersive vision of oppression and survival. Read it as a manifesto for clear female thinking. And for a moving, positive view of the way forward.

This book blew me away; it's unlike anything I've ever read. I'm so impressed by Toew's construct: to literally share a record of women talking, seeking to reach a decision of utmost importance to them and the community they dwell in. I couldn't put it down.

Women Talking is contemporary literary fiction framed by the horrific true story of a Mennonite settlement in Bolivia where men in the settlement drugged and raped hundreds of the women and children who lived there. These men then claimed, when the women questioned, that it was either the work of God as punishment or that they were lying or imagining it. It went on for years, from at least 2005-09, paused when it got so bad that the police were called in and at least half a dozen men were jailed and later convicted. However, as Toews notes in her forward, in 2013, it was reported that the rapes were still occurring.

This is a horrible situation, but Toews's book is not a retelling. Rather, she imagines and shapes Women Talking as just that: Women living in the settlement, all victims, meet to discuss their options after the men are initially arrested: stay and forgive, stay and fight, or leave..

Their discussion, as written by August, an excommunicated and disgraced member, now returned as the community's teacher (only to males), is long and freewheeling, an examination of what their faith is and isn't, the nature of what forgiveness could mean, if it is attainable, and what possibilities could arise if they leave.

While the discussion is fascinating and seemingly Socratic in nature, (I have only seen it applied sparingly in graduate seminars, and although it's supposedly still used in law schools, I can't speak to it) I felt it was bogged down by Toews's use of August to create a framework for the discussion with not just his seemingly constant personal interjections (though to be fair, she seems to want them to be a springboard for further reflection) but also with his backstory, which I found not nearly as fascinating as Toews seems to want it to be.

Although August is there for a reason other than his ability to transcribe the discussion, the reasoning behind it was not as shocking or as revelatory as I think it was intended to be, because how could the systemic horror that spurred this discussion not be a tip off that it was the product of not just years but of a generation/generations?

The ending is open and terrifying, but couldn't be any other way. However, Women Talking lacks the effect it strives for. In reaching so high and far, in attempting to show an intense but largely philosophical debate in the framework of a show of the evils perpetrated on these women, it is neither the exploration it wants to be nor the story it tries to be. Those looking for understanding of the events won't find it, and those hoping for a critique of patriarchy will find that its conclusions are dire but obvious.

Aside: Am I the only one who finds the inclusion of the Margaret Atwood tweet in the promotional materials odd? While it's obviously a great thing to have a blurb from Margaret Atwood, the quote/tweet reads more like a reminder to read The Handmaid's Tale (again) or watch the Hulu adaptation, imo. "“This amazing, sad, shocking, but touching novel, based on a real-life event, could be right out of The Handmaid's Tale.” --Margaret Atwood, on Twitter" I just feel that framing praise for a novel based on real events by referencing another work of fiction, classic and relevant though it may be, further removes the fact that Women Talking is not based on something that could be, but something that was and is real and here and *now.*

Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing for the ARC of this book!

I would have to say that within the first few pages, I was completely bored. It was very wordy and repetitive. Too much description of what the man was doing for these women instead of their story. (I will admit that I could not finish or really get passed the first chapter so maybe it got better) This book was not for me but the story (as summarized) sounded interesting and something that I would like to read but the way it was written was just not for me.

again, thank you for this ARC this is my first time receiving one!

“How would you feel if in your entire lifetime it had never mattered what you thought?”

A group of eight women of the Molotschna Mennonite community are gathered secretly in a hayloft, talking through their options. The men in the community are away in the nearest city, posting bail for the eight Molotschna men accused of drugging these and other women and girls (as young as three years old) with an animal tranquilizing spray and then raping and sexually abusing them multiple times over a period of years. Since the women have not been allowed to learn to read or write, they have asked August Epp, a man who had been excommunicated from their group as a child but has now returned to live there as a teacher to the boys, to take the minutes of their conversations, as they struggle with three equally difficult options: do nothing; stay and fight; or leave the community. Women Talking, by Miriam Toews, is August’s account of these discussions—an account which would read as another chilling dystopian tale along the lines of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, were it not for the horrifying fact it is based on a true story.

I was intrigued about Women Talking as soon as I read the synopsis, but I should caution readers right now that this book is not in any way a true crime story, nor are the details of the actual attacks, the arrests, trials and subsequent outcomes for the community’s women the focus of the narrative. Despite the subject matter, it is not at all sensational; expecting this title to be a fact-driven page turner is the wrong approach. Rather, this is a quiet but powerful imagining of how women who have never been given a chance to think for themselves and who are completely isolated from the outside world try to decide on the appropriate course of action. Over the course of two days of sometimes heated philosophical and theological discussions, they each emerge as individuals with distinct personalities—something that the men in their community have never allowed them to be. “We are women without a voice,” says Ona, one of the debating women. In Women Talking, Miriam Toews, herself a former member of a Mennonite community, beautifully gives these women the voice they have been denied.

Thank you to Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this title in exchange for my honest review.

Women Talking is about exactly that. I had not heard of the situation that is the background of the book- that of a Mennonite settlement in Bolivia where 8 men from the settlement systematically drugged and raped many of the women (and children!) in the community. For a book with such dire underpinnings, it is surprisingly light and even occasionally funny- though there is plenty of misery to find in and around what is said. The narrator, a semi-outsider (and a man) was an interesting choice, since the entire lives of these women has been subject to the authority of men- but as the story is slowly revealed, his place among them makes more sense than just because he happens to be able to write in English.

This isn't a fun book most of the time, and sometimes I found the prose by turns overly philosophical and layered and occasionally frustratingly simple. But overall I thought it was interesting and thought-provoking,

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this digital ARC in return for my unbiased review. Four stars for dealing with challenging ideas in a way that feels redemptive, and well-explored.

This is a weird book. I liked it, and it held my interest, but it's definitely not for everybody. Trigger warning: this novel is based on real life events, which are horrifying. This makes it dark, but occasionally it's also quite funny.

In the early 2000s, in Bolivia, a terrible series of crimes occurred in an isolated Mennonite community. A group of men- for months- used sprayed animal tranquilizers to knock out entire families, and then they'd sexually assault the women and very young girls, children. It went on for months, and when the victims woke up and knew something was wrong, the community posited that they were being victimized by demons. Finally one of the men was caught, and he confessed and implicated the others. The original plan was to confine the perpetrators within the community, but one of the victims tried to murder one of them, so they reluctantly brought in Bolivian legal authorities.

At the opening of this novel, a bunch of the men are going to bail out the perpetrators. When they are brought back to the community, the women will be expected to publicly forgive them (because not forgiving them would be a sin). This novel seems a bit like a play, as it mostly takes place in a barn, where some of the women are having a conversation about what to do. Stay and do nothing? Stay and fight? Or leave? Mind you, these women have no skills for the modern world. They are kept illiterate (although boys are taught to read and write), and they don’t even speak Spanish- they speak an archaic German-Dutch dialect. Even coming together to speak with no men present would be seen as an insurrection, so they’re very secretive. There’s a certain amount of discussion about how to leave if they decide to do so, but mostly, this is a 200+ page conversation about the patriarchy. And I was there for it.