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The Flying Troutmans Miriam Toews 9780307397492 Books

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The Flying Troutmans Miriam Toews 9780307397492 Books

I had to read this book for a book club meeting or I would never have finished it. The author made the character of the young girl so out of normal range that the mild reactions to her were simply unbelievable. What might have been an appealing tale of kids sadly mistreated by a mentally ill mother became a fantasy trip to an unknown father...with ridiculous events thrown in. Don't waste your time.


Tags : The Flying Troutmans [Miriam Toews] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Pp. 275, SIGNED and with a lengthy dedicated by the author on the title page.,Miriam Toews,The Flying Troutmans,Knopf Canada,0307397491,G0307397491I3N00

The Flying Troutmans Miriam Toews 9780307397492 Books Reviews

The Flying Troutmans is one of those books that, while I ultimately came to enjoy it, it took me so long to get to that point that I don't feel confident encouraging other people to read it.

The reason I had trouble getting into this novel is that it has a distinct style of prose. A few things about it are obvious it's in first-person (from the aunt of two kids who has flown back from Paris to help take care of them when her sister goes off the deep end and has to be committed) and does not use quotation marks in dialogue. What I had trouble with was the flat drollness of the narrator's style. She describes everything in the same matter-of-fact way, without really conveying emotion. So early on, the dramatic death that the narrator witnessed when she was a kid, something that surely would have a huge impact on her, is described in the same basic way as the purple hair of the little girl she is responsible for. So at first, everything is blended into this stew of quirkiness and every mouthful tastes the same, making it decidedly unclear what kind of reaction to have about anything.

To give an example (and sorry that doesn't seem to let me do indentations)

We talked for a while about Grandma, how she'd once been rescued at sea and dragged onto some Jamaican beach by a group of fishermen. She had taken Thebes [the girl] to Jamaica for a short holiday after her brain surgery and they'd gone banana boating. My mother fell off and was laughing so hard she couldn't climb back onto the boat.

She was also really fat, said Thebes.

So a bunch of guys saw her laughing and bobbing way out in the sea and swam out to rescue her.

One guy on each extremity, said Thebes. Grandma looked like a starfish...

---------------
I found this style of writing puzzling at first, a little fake in its attempt to mix humor and tragedy. (The significant death is actually a scene similar to the above.) My slowness to warm to the novel might simply be because I don't typically read `contemporary fiction' ultimately, I felt comfortable with this and found the trio of main characters --- the aunt, the teenage boy who'd rather be playing basketball and the girl who revels in being bizarre --- in the end I found them winsome.

The feelings of the aunt remain something of an enigma, but critics have pointed out that this is often a flaw of first-person narration the narrator is a camera looking out onto the world and there's often not a good shot in the mirror. (It doesn't have to be this way, of course take the narrator of Notes from Underground.)

And if the novel shares in a limitation common to similar novels, it does do something literary quite well while the novel largely revolves around the aunt and the kids, their lives revolve around people who are almost never on stage and the author does a good job of giving them a haunting presence.

Other reviewers complain that this feels like a rip-off of the film Little Miss Sunshine, which came out two years before this novel. The dust jacket of the hardcover makes the same comparison. Probably this novel was working its way through the publishing world when that movie came out. The author, I imagine, cringed at the coincidental similarities but the editor went, "Hey, this is a winning ticket right now." So I doubt the author was a lazy imitator, but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll feel anymore original if you read it.

And on , the hardcover is cheaper than the paperback?
I have read this book and given copies to friends , it is a funny heart warming tale of a disfunctional familes road trip ,redemption , acceptance and mental health all told with a respectful fuuny twist
Lousy story, lousy language. Waste of time. Absolutely worthless. Don't waste your time or your money! No, no, no, no!
this is the kind of book that makes you wonder how some people manage to get a book published. Poor writing, packed with cliches, trite story, not a single of the characters are believable. A poor ripoff of "Little Miss Sunshine."
Characters are incredibly well developed and witty. This book makes you laugh out loud and similarly tugs your heart strings. Best book I have read in some time. Ending is less well developed and slightly abrupt, however it leaves you feeling like we need more Troutman's in the future.
Funny and touching
An edgy, quirky book, full of imperfect, yet endearing characters I fell in love with! "A Complicated Kindness" is on my top 10 list, this is a more straight-forward narrative, yet equally memorable.
I had to read this book for a book club meeting or I would never have finished it. The author made the character of the young girl so out of normal range that the mild reactions to her were simply unbelievable. What might have been an appealing tale of kids sadly mistreated by a mentally ill mother became a fantasy trip to an unknown father...with ridiculous events thrown in. Don't waste your time.