"Long before she became one of Canada's most celebrated authors, Miriam Toews was an 18-year-old with a restless streak, set on fleeing the strictures of her conservative Mennonite community. Toews's family descended from Russian Mennonites and spoke Plautdietsch, an unwritten language. They grew up in a world with little privacy, many unofficial rules and the threat of excommunication. Toews and a boyfriend had planned a bike trip across Europe, one in which they would sit on the grave of John Keats and smoke too many"
"Marj, then 24, had recently moved back home and was in a period of deep depression. She had stopped talking, but she would still write. She was so sick, says Toews, sitting across from me at a picnic table in Toronto's Trinity Bellwoods park. Toews began writing to her sister, partly because she loved talking to her and partly because she hoped it would save her life."
"Which, of course, is a ridiculous idea, says Toews. That me writing letters would keep her alive. But I really took it seriously. Anyone with a formidable older sister knows their unrivaled power. They are a portal to the wider world, brave in their primacy. Marj Toews was one such older sister. She was six years older than Miriam, who worshipped her from day one."
Miriam Toews grew up in a conservative Russian Mennonite community that spoke Plautdietsch, an unwritten language, and enforced many unofficial rules and the threat of excommunication. At 18 she planned to leave and travel across Europe with a boyfriend, imagining moments such as sitting on John Keats's grave and smoking too many cigarettes. Before leaving she agreed to send letters to her older sister Marj, who had returned home and was deeply depressed and largely silent. Toews hoped those letters might help keep Marj alive. Marj later died by suicide at 52. Toews continued a literary career, including a book adapted into an Oscar-winning film.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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