It’s an irreconcilable position for both sisters, and All My Puny Sorrows has no interest in pretending otherwise. Gadon tempers Elf’s fragility with surprising resolve, and she regards Yoli’s mood swings with the bittersweet remove of someone who doesn’t plan to stick around for many more of them.Īs Yoli puts it, Elf has “enemies that love ” - people working their hardest to keep Elf from what she wants most in the world, because what she wants most in the world is not to be in it anymore. Pill imbues her every line reading as Yoli with a mélange of restless emotions - her affectionate teasing carries undercurrents of desperation and anger, her furious rants a note of pleading. But the tenderness was there all along.Venue: Toronto International Film Festival (Special Presentations)Ĭast: Alison Pill, Sarah Gadon, Mare Winningham, Donal Logue, Amybeth McNultyĪuthor Miriam Toews has readily acknowledged that her 2014 novel was based on similar events in her own life, and her intimate understanding of the situation shows in the film’s refusal to smooth over the thorny situation it presents. Then the excitement will build, as you put ”the violence and agony of life into every note” until you must make an important decision: Either return to tenderness or ”continue on with the truth, the violence, the pain, the tragedy, to the very end.” It’s an apt description of how Toews has constructed this novel, too, with one exception: In the end, she chooses tragedy.
You must first establish tenderness, she says. Early on, Elf tells Yoli how to play the piano. (The title comes from a Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem about losing his sister Elf and Yoli often discuss favorite poets.) This book certainly does that too.
In one scene, Yoli’s mother even rants about novels where ”the whole book is basically a description of the million and one ways in which the protagonist is sad.” Sorrows may be a fierce dissection of loss, but it’s also an unflinching look at family and failure and self-interest and how great literature can help shape your view of these things. Told in Yoli’s raw voice, which swings from sympathy to rage to wry humor, All My Puny Sorrows isn’t just another volume in the sad-novel genre.
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