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.

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.*

“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.

I have to say, this book was just as powerful as I thought it would be. It’s full of deep, thoughtful discussion and the voices of each of the women ring true. It’s a powerful story and Toews does a brilliant job of processing this story and interpreting it into fascinating dialogue. The women are being tested in their faith, in their loyalty, in the very orientation of their place in their colony. If you love philosophical discussion, empowering women’s stories, and realistic fiction, this book melds all of these into a compelling story that will keep you invested. While the writing is, at times, too flowery and abstract, Toews still keeps it grounded in the women’s words, in what they are feeling/thinking/processing. This book, called Women Talking is made up of just that, women talking. To each other, to their children, to August, their minutes keeper. It is women's’ voices that make up the fabric of this novel and that is by and large what makes it so compelling. For once, the women in this colony are taking control of their future and it is a powerful thing.

This is one of the best books I have ever read. Its heart is so big, it covers the surface of the earth.

Toews' contribution to the #metoo moment from inside a Mennonite community in Bolivia (this is a true story) is not only a tribute to the hundreds of women who were terrified and injured in this particular historical event, but also to all the women all over the world who took their courage in their hands and TALKED: to each other, to the public. Women talked, and in talking allowed other women to talk, and THINGS CHANGED.

So this is about the seismic power of women's talking. Women's talking -- to each other, for one -- creates community, creates culture, breaks bondage, reframes patriarchy. The women who talk in Toews' book do all of this and so much more: they connect, they love, they rage, they grieve, they comfort, they disclose, they respect, they are humble and strong, they are passionate and moderating. In the course of two days they create a bond with each other that transcends age and personal differences, even old grudges. There is no western culture in which men are allowed the same kind of passionate, liberating talk. Let's use it more, women.

What Toews does here with language (the women are illiterate and also speak an old oral language that has no written version) is phenomenal. One can imagine literary devices that would not have necessitated the interposing of a man between the women and their words. How about an omniscient narrator? But no, that would have been cheating, would it not? So Toews presents this book as the minutes of the meeting the women convene to discuss their next move after the magnitude of the sexual violence has been ascertained. On the one hand, this makes the words of the book the words of a man, who not only transcribes but also translates. On the other hand, it recasts masculinity. This particular man is vilified by the community for his sensitivity, his "femininity." August, the minute-taker, a man, ends up playing an essential role in the salvation of the women, and, in the process, he is saved himself.

Amazing book. Amazing literary achievement. I honestly cannot think of a better book in the whole history of books.

Women Talking is a novelization of historical events which took place in a remote Mennonite village in the early 2000's. Over a series of years, women and children were drugged in their sleep and brutally raped and beaten often multiple times. These crimes are known as the ghost rapes of Bolivia. Miriam Toews has taken the events but given them a twist. The story takes place over 48 hours in which a group of women who have been victimized, meet to determine their destiny. Will they 1) stay and do nothing 2) stay and fight or 3) leave the village and seek out a new future.
What follows is a heartbreakingly courageous journey in the psyche of survivors of spiritual, physical and sexual abuse, misogyny, fundamentalism, and patriarchal societies. As the women discuss their options, we realize how isolated they are as a community. They do not speak the language of the non-Mennonite communities around them. They cannot read or write. They have no marketable skills and it seems that very few people believe their story. Underlying all these facts is the fundamental indoctrination they have received which tells them that any choice they make other than remaining, forgiving and submitting will damn their souls to hell for eternity.
The various physical and mental/emotional repercussions of the abuse are achingly terrible and the courage the ladies show as they wrestle with how to escape, how to survive and how to remain faithful to their God is told with breathtaking skill. Miriam Toews has taken a terrible nightmare and imbued it with the beauty of the human spirit and hope for a better future.

Once again, I’m so impressed with Toews’ ability to tackle a devastating and heartbreaking story with humor and grace. While this wasn’t quite All My Puny Sorrows levels for me (a book so hilarious and depressing that I literally cried and laughed at the same time, which gave me such a nasty case of the hiccups) this was another enjoyable and very thought-provoking read.

Not much action to be found in these pages—it really is just women talking—and while there are tense moments to keep you on your toes, the novel is truly a testimony to sisterhood and friendships. If you’re into ruminations and arguments about religion, patriarchy, power, love, trauma, and our tenuous grasp on self-worth in the face of despair and an uncertain future, then you’ll definitely get a kick out of this one! There’s also the occasional random fact about dragonflies and butterflies, and I very much appreciated these bonus entomology lessons. (That’s not sarcasm; I’m for sure pulling these knowledge nuggets out next time I’m in trapped in an uncomfortable, awkward lull in a conversation with a stranger. Oh no, is this why I can’t make friends?)

There’s a delicious undertone of the note-taker being the only male in the group. Is he a sympathetic character, a victim like the women, or an unreliable narrator, untrustworthy in his translations and, well, manhood? However you choose to see him can drastically change the tone of the story, and I love this hidden darkness simmering beneath the surface of something seemingly plain and straightforward. (Much like the evil corrupting the Mennonite community itself…!)

In a hayloft, several women gather, with only a single man present to take notes on their urgent conversation. The subject of discussion: what to do about their situation as residents of a remote colony where, they’ve just learned, the nighttime violations they’ve experienced were the work of not ghosts, but men who drugged them to rape and molest.

It’s a horrific scenario, all the more so because it’s based on truth. In 2011, a group of men from a Mennonite colony in Bolivia were convicted of drugging and abusing well over a hundred community members — mostly women and girls, including very young children, although some men and boys were also raped. The perpetrators sprayed animal anesthetic to render their victims unconscious, and the attacks continued for half a decade.

Miriam Toews’s new novel considers what might have gone through the minds of the colony’s women upon learning the abominable truth behind their symptoms. The book unfolds like a dystopian fiction, and to the very end it’s shocking to imagine that while the specific characters are the author’s inventions, their circumstances are very real and very recent.

While the book grows suspenseful in its final pages, as the women put a plan into action and grapple with its implications, for most of its 240-page length Women Talking is reflective, often philosophical. It’s rich with metaphor, almost to a fault — particularly in the early pages, when we’re anxious to have the scene set and context explained. These are women who’ve essentially lived their lives outside of time, the author seems to be emphasizing. A sense of urgency is foreign to them.

The book, which was published internationally last year and arrives in America on a wave of praise from the likes of Margaret Atwood, considers at length the women’s crisis of faith. Why has God caused His sons to act this way, and what does He expect his daughters to do in response? He commands women to obey their husbands, but He also implores them to protect their children. What are the women to do when those duties come into conflict?

With no quotation marks, Women Talking flows like a stream of consciousness, explained by the fact that the text is ostensibly the verbatim notes of the narrator August, a prodigal son who has his own troubled history to grapple with. Characters gradually emerge — like the outspoken Salome and a pair of spirited teenagers — but the cumulative effect is as if the women of the colony were different voices in a single mind.

To stay, to leave, to fight, to love, to heal, to harm…the community’s grief has left these women with all of those impulses. By the novel’s end, their path has become clear, but not as clear as the inherent violence of a patriarchal order.

Interesting concept but I didn't care for the dialogue. I felt sorry for the women and everything they went through

A unique and powerful addition to the growing canon of MeToo type literature.

This one begins with a terrible, true story. But Toews is much more concerned with the future than the past, particularly how the group of women who have been victims will move forward and determine their own future, despite the disadvantages of lifetimes of isolation and illiteracy. We get to know the women entirely through their own words, as they meet to discuss their options and make plans.

I will be thinking about these women for a long time to come.

With thanks to Bloomsbury USA and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Toews' latest is a devastating, honest, and powerful story based on the real-life events of a Mennonite community in Bolivia. The women of Molotschna, a remote and isolated community is destroyed by a series of rapes committed by the men of the community on many of the women and children. The story is through the POV of August, a once exiled member of the community and trusted friend of the women as they debate what to do in the wake of this devastation. The story is heartbreaking and Toews does a remarkable job of making these characters real. I couldn't put this down.

I love the fight and spunk that the author gave the women but since her use of male narrator limited the story to the confines of a hay loft and what women would be willing to divulge to a man, the story lacked depth. She manages to show the struggle of women trying to deal with the destruction of trust within their community and the challenge to their faith which they know only through the men that have destroyed that trust. It is very well done, I just wish there had been so much more to it.

All in all it was a good quick read but I would have loved to see so more.