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Women Talking

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Women Talking

By: Miriam Toews
Narrated by: Matthew Edison
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Summary

Between 2005 and 2009, in a remote religious Mennonite colony, over a hundred girls and women were knocked unconscious and raped, often repeatedly, by what many thought were ghosts or demons, as a punishment for their sins. As the women tentatively began to share the details of the attacks - waking up sore and bleeding and not understanding why - their stories were chalked up to 'wild female imagination.'

Women Talking is an imagined response to these real events. Eight women, all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their colony and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in, meet secretly in a hayloft with the intention of making a decision about how to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm. They have two days to make a plan, while the men of the colony are away in the city attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists (not ghosts as it turns out but local men) and bring them home.

©2018 Miriam Toews (P)2018 Penguin Random House Canada Ltd Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Thriller & Suspense Fiction Suspense
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Not sure how to put it into words, just a few minutes after finishing it. An experience!

incredible experience.

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I listened to this book in the UK having missed the film in the cinema and frustrated at the delay in the release date for streaming to UK audiences.
I am so pleased that I listened before I have seen the film. The novel is a treasure of concise spare narrative. Accurate. Careful. Precise. Respectful. At first I had wondered whether it might be a rhetorical device for rehearsing theological arguments about suffering and forgiveness. But I have found that it does so much more than this in setting this story in the context of the individual characters created by Toews, and their realistic life stories.
I pay tribute to women who have experienced sexual violence in any context, but particularly to those in religious communities who must find a way to make sense of their experiences in the context of their faith.
I pay tribute to the author, Miriam Toews, who has laboured to produce this novel and reflected with such profound honesty on the experiences of some of the women in the Mennonite community.

Narrative. Theology. Violence. Truth-telling.

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A unique and captivating story. The characters were very well rounded and the narrator is excellent. Heartbreaking yet life affirming novel with a variety of nuanced female characters. I would recommend this book to anyone.

Woman, Life, Freedom

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This is a profound and deeply moving story, made more so by being based in truth and spending its time examining truth.
It is also real, and funny in places. The characters and the interplay between them is disturbingly accurate!
I may have finished this book, but it’s so thought provoking that I know it’ll be a long time until it’s finished with me.

Talking and listening

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I enjoyed this book, and can see that if I was better versed in analysing and comprehending literature, I'd get a lot more out of it. so I'm rating it 5 stars, because I think for people looking for a book to think about and analyse, it is perfect.

that said, it's not a very fun or plot heavy book. I wouldn't reccomended it for a casual listen

this is an English-lit book

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