by Miriam Toews, 2021
This is the 2nd book selection for the Old Town Library Book Club 2025-2026. It was very different, very funny in spots, a wonderment, sometimes irritating, but touching and beautiful. The story takes place in Toronto. There are 4 main characters: Grandma, Mom, Swiv, and Gord. Swiv is 9 years old, very precocious, maybe a genius. She has been suspended from school for fighting and is at home taking care of her beloved Grandma, who takes a billion pills, has heart problems, is in danger of dying at any moment, but is full of love and fun and strength for Swiv and her Mom (and Gord). Mom is an actress who is pregnant. They call the baby, Gord. They don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, but Gord is a powerful being. Mom is forgoing her bad habits to keep Gord healthy, and is pretty much insane most of the time; sometimes very angry (“Scorched Earth”) but almost always over-the-top emotional. Grandma and Swiv and Mom are very excited for Gord to be born.
The book is told by Swiv; it is her stream of conscious through 251 pages. She is FUNNY but neurotic. She is responsible for Grandma, she thinks, and she thinks her Mom is insane. She and Grandma are a team. Swiv takes care of making sure Grandma takes her billions of pills correctly, picks them up off the floor, along with Grandma’s hearing aids. Swiv helps Grandma take a shower. Swiv helps Grandma boil her conchigliettes (little shell macaroni).
Grandma and Swiv have a bond between them. They go through their days together while pregnant Mom is away at rehearsal. They start the day with Editorial Meetings. Then Math class and Swiv is able to immediately answer the most complex Math problems. Each and every part of the day is an adventure together. Grandma is an amazing woman – one of about 15 children, a very hard life, but so full of love and joy for everyone. She loves people and makes friends with everyone she meets. Swiv doesn’t know what to think but she goes along and watches closely and narrates every adventure they have through her 9 year-old genius eyes. Towards the middle of the book, Grandma decides she needs to go to California to see her beloved nephews, Lou and Ken, who live in Fresno. Swiv goes with her. It’s a harrowing, grand, eye-opening adventure for Swiv, with some beautiful, poignant moments for Grandma. Grandma ends up getting hurt in California. She and Swiv go to a nursing home to visit some of her old friends. Grandma does a kick while dancing for some old guys in the nursing home and falls and breaks her arm and loses a tooth. She refuses to go to an American hospital because it will bankrupt her daughter and Swiv. She and Swiv fly home, another harrowing adventure. Grandma goes straight to a hospital in Toronto. She is failing. Swiv and Mom are there, and Mom goes into labor. Gord is born in the maternity ward while Grandma is in ICU. Swiv takes baby Gord from atop her sleeping mother, and puts her in her backpack and takes her to see Grandma in the ICU and shows her to Grandma. Grandma opens her eyes and sees baby Gord. Then Mom shows up frantic for Gord and sees Swiv and her infant sister with Grandma. What a touching scene. What a beautiful ending. Grandma dies and Swiv and Mom and Gord (who is named Elvira after Grandma) are together with her to the end. Beautiful!
Here’s the ending scene:
The young nurse showed us a little note that Grandma had written when she was still attached to the hose. She gave it to Mom. Mom read it to me and Gord. My friends, I’d like to negotiate my surrender! What does that mean! I said.
Gord lay there with us making small noises and small movements. I let her hang on to my finger. The nurse said Grandma had asked them to take out the hose. So she could talk? I asked. So she could die, said Mom. Mom was crying but she was smiling and crying because Mom is Mom. All over the map! I put my hand on Grandma’s stomach. Maybe she would laugh now. Shake, I said in my head. Please shake. Mom told Grandma we were going to be okay. I waited. Mom told Grandma she could go. C’mon, shake! Mom told Grandma we loved her so much, that Momo and Grandpa and Irene and her mom and dad and all her four thousand dead brothers and sisters were waiting for her. Mom kept making lists of people for Grandma. Seems like there were four hundred billion people waiting around somewhere for Grandma to get the party started. Then Mom was singing Grandma’s favourite CCR song. Tears were falling onto my arm from Mom, who was still trying to smile while she cried. Gord made little squeaks in my jean jacket. Mom was singing “Someday Never Comes.” Then we both sang Grandma’s other favourite song. For poor on’ry people like you and like I…I wonder as I wander out under the sky.
I waited for Grandma’s stomach to shake. It didn’t shake. She’d grab me soon and say, Aha, gotcha! The nurses quietly went away. Grandma, Grandma, I said. I’ll give you a hundred bucks. Grandma! I said. Fight!
Here are the last 2 paragraphs of the book:
Lou is walking to Canada! I asked Mom if she’d want to bang Lou or at least be his girlfriend. She’s beautiful enough, I think, almost, to be his girlfriend. Mom said no. She said, Ew, Swiv, no. We’re cousins! That’s not normal. So believe it or not, now Mom has finally decided to take an interest in being normal. Better late than never! I asked Mom what on’ry means. You mean like in the song? She said. Poor on’ry people like you and like I? She said she thought it meant all riled up. As in ornery, she said. Are we poor, ornery people? I asked her. She told me that from now on she was going to write her own plays and direct them. She says she just does not jive with directors even though the word is jibe. She’s still doing the play. I’m going to take care of Gord backstage so Mom can come flying back there and feed her between scenes. Gord is hilarious most of the time. And the rest of the time she’s a basket case. She really takes after Mom.
I read Grandma’s letter to Gord the other day. You’re a small thing and you must learn to fight. And today I saw one tiny blue pill on the floor under the table where Grandma sits. Bombs away, Swiv! I heard her say. Man, you should have seen how fast I fell to my knees.
Here’s an example early on:
“Today Grandma finally remembered I was supposed to be in school even though I’d already been home for fifty-nine days. Why aren’t you in school? she asked. I didn’t say anything because she sounded like a cop and she never answers their questions so why should I. Fighting? said Grandma. I didn’t move. Then I did what Grandma does when the cops come, which is she holds up an imaginary cellphone like she’s recording them. She said she already knew it must be about fighting because I kept coming home with dried blood on my face and bruises on my neck and tufts of hair ripped out of my head and my jacket missing an arm. Then we were quiet for a long, long time, just sitting there making small noises, not words. I put my fake phone on the table with a big swooping gesture like I was doing her a favour by not recording her anymore. I smashed breadcrumbs on the tablecloth with my thumb. Grandma shook her pill case a few times and lined up her mouse and pad and laptop in a straight row. I watched her fingers moving around on the table. Her nails needed clipping again. I couldn’t remember where I’d left the nail clipper. I looked at her face. She was smiling.”
Here’s a poignant moment between Grandma and her nephews, Lou and Ken (and Ken’s girlfriend, Jude), in California:
Grandma and Lou sat close together. Lou asked Grandma if she’d ever in all her life lost her faith. Grandma said, Oh! Uppy! That’s Lou’s nickname from when he was a baby and always wanted to be picked up. Of course I have! Yeah? said Lou. Wunt you tell us all about that?
She had a fight with God for ten years. That’s how you know she loves him. Grandma held Lou’s hand while she told us about her fight. She believes that God is love and that love is in each one of us even if we don’t believe in God. I’ve never felt forsaken, she said. But for about ten years she stopped praying. She had prayed and prayed that Grandpa would get healthy and be okay. He wasn’t. He only got worse and worse. So she stopped praying for that and started praying and praying that she’d have the strength to take care of him. Well, finally, she stopped praying altogether. When her friends and family from her town would ask her to pray for them she would be quiet and try to change the subject because she couldn’t pray anymore. But still! said Grandma. She didn’t feel forsaken. She’d never felt forsaken, even when she was sixteen and desperately sad and lonely and her mother had died and her brothers had put her far away in boarding school and stolen her inheritance. She stopped praying altogether…
Enna-way, Grandma said. That was then. I stopped praying for ten years. Now I’m praying again. When she moved in with me and Mom she started to pray again. That made Lou and Ken laugh. Jude stayed serious, listening and nodding. Grandma said she prayed and prayed that God would make her a good and useful member of our household. Jude said she thought God had really answered that prayer, huh Swiv? I agreed with Jude but it was too embarrassing to say that out loud. I nodded. Grandma winked at me. She kept talking. She said she can’t really read the Bible anymore because when she reads it she only hears authoritarian old men’s voices. But she knows so much of it by heart and repeats to herself the verses that mean the most to her all the time. And before she goes to sleep every night she sings a song from her old town called a hymn which her mother sang to her, and it’s so comforting, and she’s always asleep before she can finish singing the song. Do you know the song, Swiv? asked Lou. I said yeah, Grandma sings it to me too sometimes. Grandma said that every night before she goes to bed she also quotes a verse from Lamentations. She recited it for us: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. She cried a bit telling us these things. She made me get her red purse. She fished around in there and took out an old piece of paper and showed it to everyone. It was a note from Mom from when Mom was seventeen years old. It was something encouraging about God’s love. Grandma takes it with her everywhere. I decided to write a note like that to Mom too, but I didn’t know anything about God. I could write something hopeful from Beyonce, though, and Mom could carry it around forever. Lou had his arm around Grandma’s shoulders. Jude brought her water with ice. Ken had an ice machine in his fridge. Should we sing that song? said Lou. His Mom Irene, Grandma’s sister, had sung it to him and Ken too! They knew the words. Then they all started singing, half in English and half in Grandma’s secret language. Jude didn’t know the song. She smiled at them while they sang. She cried a bit too. Lou looked happy. He really sang the song properly and seriously.
I knew the words but I didn’t want to sing. I wanted to go sailing. Grandma has good instincts. She saw me dying there at the table with crying, singing, suffering adults and she came to my rescue. Fohdich metten zigh! That’s a thing she says to energize herself. She smacked the table. That meant enough of being forsaken or not being forsaken, let’s move the blazes on! She asked Lou about starting a marching band. He didn’t know what she was talking about, but Grandma said she was dead sure he’d sent her an e-mail a few months ago saying he was thinking about starting a marching band. Then Ken and Jude started talking about marching bands too and they were all laughing and yelling which made me feel like I could leave the table and wander around the house looking at things.
Beautiful book! What a mind nine-year old Swiv has! Here’s an example of Swiv’s math ability. On the plane to California there is a mother with her baby on her lap seated near Swiv. The mother says the baby is 18 months old, and asks Swiv how old she is. Swiv answers that she is 100 months old. Just like that – 100 months.
Loved this book. Thankful to Mandy for suggesting it and to the group for voting for it.