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Miriam Toews’ new novel begins in Paris, where Hattie, a moody artist, is dumped by her boyfriend. She is unable to wallow in self-pity because her sister Min has been committed to a psychiatric ward. With 11-year-old Thebes and 15-year-old Logan now in her care, Hattie returns to Winnipeg.

Hattie is unable to cope with parental responsibilities and so she takes the children on a road trip to the States, ostensibly to reunite them with their estranged father. Their odyssey results in a fully realized exploration of the adage, am I my sister’s keeper? 

The Flying Troutmansis a disturbing novel steeped in dysfunctional family lore. The flawed characters are unlikeable but intriguing because Toews is a succinct and careful writer who creates realistic, rich layers of the stifling atmosphere that encompasses their lives. Toews is marvellous at capturing the children’s moods. She explores the consequences of being reared by a psychologically damaged parent. While Hattie plays at being an irresponsible adult who neither chastises her niece for her lack of personal hygiene nor her nephew for his teenage angst, she is dimly aware that the emotional baggage accompanying them could implode and that the emotional journey could end in tragedy without the possibility of rescue.
Min provides the narrative tension as she hovers on the periphery of the story. Toews concentrates on digging into the children’s psyches. Here, she finds the precocious Thebes united with the brooding Logan in their
loneliness and longing for normalcy. Expect the unexpected—this is not a typical story.
Those who are afflicted by the modern desire to have closure and all of life’s problems tied up with glossy pop psychological mumbojumbo will find the low-key ending disquieting.
For those who prefer a finely crafted journey of unflinching honesty, Toews’ poignant book reminds us that we live in open-ended and complicated times.
 

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Sex is everywhere in Japan, but that doesn’t mean the average woman is getting any. This is the premise behind Sumie Kawakami’s absorbing and beautifully laid-out book of non-fiction stories, Goodbye Madame Butterfly. The title refers to Giacomo Puccini’s 1904 opera Madama Butterfly, in which the woman waits loyally for the return of her husband, unwilling to acknowledge, despite mounting evidence, that he has betrayed her.

Kawakami lays bare the current reality for Japanese women: resignation in the face of sexless marriages, tolerance of a husband’s access to the pervasive sex industry, and forbearance of a wider variety of men: not only husbands, but lovers, fiancés, employers.

Goodbye Madame Butterfly is a loose compilation of women’s biographies: abused and heartbroken (“Washoi!”); betrayed but complacent (“Joint Venture”); betrayed and subservient (“Red Circles”); self-abusive and craving (“The Fix”); and rationalizing of her mistreatment by men (“The Mannequin”). How are we saying goodbye to Madame Butterfly? We are left vainly urging Kawakami’s heroines to stand up for themselves.

Nonetheless, I loved the stories atypical of the collection, such as “Synchronicity,” in which the heroine is jilted but fearless, and “The Shinto Priest’s Wife,” in which the suspense lies not in how much the heroine will withstand from the men in her life, but in how she will make peace with her mother-in- law and with her own body.

The back story that weaves its way through Goodbye Madame Butterflyis equally gripping. Kawakami casually dispenses cultural shocks as she threads her stories: fortune-telling, divination lore, and purification rites; a memorial service and tombstone for an aborted fetus; a phenomenological explanation for bulimia; the custom of men taking their wives’ last names to become heirs to the wives’ family fortunes; the practice of addressing people by their titles, rather than their names; and many more. Such cultural tidbits are mesmerizing for the non-Japanese reader.

Goodbye Madame Butterfly is a fascinating read, though it is discouraging as a new template in a new age. As a sequel to Puccini’s opera, it would seem no less tragic.