The movie does capture the incredible emotions that tie together the women who are to decide the fate of the colony, all of whom are blood relations. The movie cannot show all the underlying subplots, one of which is that perhaps the men accused and jailed are not guilty but were accused by the one man who was caught and who were fringe community members like August, and another regarding Bishop Peters, whose character is not in the movie at all.

He's also in love with Ona, one of the many women, girls, and babies who has been raped while unconscious by some of the men.

Making his way back after his parents' abandonment and death, he acts as scribe because none of the women are literate and because he's judged a eunuch by the men of the colony, since he doesn't farm and isn't married. Both are seen through the eyes of August, whose parents left the colony with him and moved to London, where he became caught up in a demonstration and jailed. Firstly, to take such a horrendous crime, taking place within a religious community the author was once affiliated with, and to swaddle it in such painful beauty and grace is exceptional. But I didn't get there in time, and following up on the incredible movie with the equally stunning book is a perfect package. Read the book or see the movie first? I'm an avid reader, so book first is usually my plan. Toews has chosen to focus the novel tightly on a particular time and place, and yet it contains within its 48 hours and setting inside a hayloft an entire vast universe of thinking and feeling about the experience of women (and therefore men, too) in our contemporary world. By turns poignant, witty, acerbic, bitter, tender, devastating, and heartbreaking, the voices in this extraordinary novel are unforgettable. Taking minutes is the one man trusted and invited by the women to witness the conversationâ?a former outcast whose own surprising story is revealed as the women speak. They have come together to debate, on behalf of all the women and children in the community, whether to stay or leave before the men return. The novel takes place over forty-eight hours, as eight women gather in secret in a neighbour's barn while the men are in a nearby town posting bail for the attackers. A transformative and necessary workâ?as completely unexpected as it is inspiredâ?by the award-winning author of the bestselling novels All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness.īased on actual events that happened between 20 in a remote Mennonite community where more than 100 girls and women were drugged unconscious and assaulted in the night by what they were told (by the men of the colony) were 'ghosts' or 'demons,' Miriam Toews' bold and affecting novel Women Talking is an imagined response to these real events.

Women Talking by Miriam Toews