A Truce That Is Not Peace

‘This book is a triumph – a meditation on writing, suicide, guilt and silence; a fragmented account of her life so far; and an illustration of why she’s one of Canada’s most admired writers’ Guardian, ‘Book of the Day’

‘Segueing between the present and the past, Toews endeavours to find a link between silence, suicide and creativity. She does not shy away from her own vulnerability, and writes with both candour and humour’ Observer

‘Toews knows exactly how to extract hilarity from horrifying events … a short, at times very funny account of some of the darkest moments in her life’ The Times

‘As fluent in the comic register as it is in the tragic … this is a grief memoir in the vein of Joan Didion’s Blue Nights … written not from the trenches of fresh loss but from the steadier perch of a generation-long hindsight’ New York Times

‘A profoundly moving meditation on the frailty of memory and the permanence of loss … nothing short of a masterpiece’ San Francisco Chronicle

‘This is memoir perfection. Toews manages to be funny about life’s hardest moments … I adored it’ Cariad Lloyd, author of You Are Not Alone

‘Original, autobiographical, deeply painful, funny … A Truce That Is Not Peace is the best memoir you will read all year’ Nick Hornby, author of Just Like You

‘A brilliant, absorbing, bittersweet memoir … it broke my heart in the best of ways’ Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti

‘Written with such fiery brilliance that the sadness it contains is transformed into an affirmation of Life in all its richness and variety. This remarkable book will live forever’ Celia Paul, author of Self-Portrait

‘Bursting with hilariousness and suffering and rage and also so much tenderness … I would have read another thousand chapters’ Catherine Newman, author of Sandwich

‘Essential reading, a smart and wise companion for turbulent times’ Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel

‘Piercing and distilled, a masterpiece in vulnerability and performance’ Hannah Pittard, author of We Are Too Many

Miriam Toews is the author of the bestselling novels Women Talking, All My Puny Sorrows, Summer of My Amazing Luck, A Boy of Good Breeding, A Complicated Kindness, The Flying Troutmans, Irma Voth, Fight Night and one work of nonfiction, Swing Low: A Life. She is the winner of the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, the Libris Award for Fiction Book of the Year, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award. She lives in Toronto.