Sweeter Than All The World (Paperback)

by Rudy Wiebe (Author)
Key Phrases: sweeter than all, Sweeter Than All the World, Young Peter, Adam Wiebe (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
?[Wiebe] breathes life into a series of Mennonite characters, who tell their stories from beyond the grave.? -- Maclean?s

?This novel deserves respect. It is an important work; a fictional compilation of voices from Mennonite history, and a resonant portrait of a contemporary man inflicted with a chronic (and, it would seem, inherited) sense of brokenness.? -- Ottawa Citizen

?A beautiful, moving book.? -- The Globe and Mail

?Wiebe succeeds in making [history] dramatic, intriguing, romantic and tragic.? -- Calgary Herald

?Rudy Wiebe is an immensely talented writer ? an outstanding writer ? whose contribution will endure.? -- The Globe and Mail

?One of Canada?s most gifted writers -- a peerless delineator of his country?s history and soul.? -- Canadian Jewish News

Praise for A Discovery of Strangers:

?A work of extraordinary originality and beauty.? -- The Globe and Mail

?A pleasure of the first order ? the pleasure of true art.? -- Edmonton Journal

Praise for Stolen Life:

?So rich...I couldn?t put it down.? -- Ann-Marie MacDonald

?The most powerful book I?ve ever read.... Insightful, poetic, gripping.? -- The Hamilton Spectator -- Review

Review
“A creative exploration of the interrelationships between personal identity, religious faith and historical particularity…. Wiebe is…successful in crafting a range of haunting and evocative images.”
–Mennonite Brethren Herald

“A beautiful, moving book….there is some absolutely lovely stuff here….The descriptions…are marvellous….the book achieves a wonderful cinematic clarity…”
–Mark Sinnett, The Globe and Mail, Saturday, October 27, 2001

“With the audacious confidence of a mature writer, [Wiebe] breathes life into a series of Mennonite characters, who tell their stories from beyond the grave, in the first person and in present tense.”
–Maclean’s

“This is a profoundly serious book. It is a many-voiced testimonial, a discrete series of monologues, and it functions by accumulation, one horrific tale after another, augmenting into a chorus of witnesses…. Sweeter Than All the World is a construct of iron tongs and stone, a testimony to what Italo Calvino called … “the virtues of weight.”… [T]his novel deserves respect. It is an important work; a fictional compilation of voices from Mennonite history, and a resonant portrait of a contemporary man inflicted with a chronic (and, it would seem, inherited) sense of brokenness.”
–Margaret Sweatman, Ottawa Citizen

“His great strength lies in meticulous research, passion for his subjects, and a powerful narrative sweep….Fascinating.”
–Quill and Quire

“Intellectually and psychologically challenging….a difficult exercise is ultimately rewarding….
–Calgary Herald

“A panoramic examination of Mennonite history through the story of one particular family.”
–Saskatoon StarPhoenix

“Wiebe is a writer who does his homework…There is much of interest here, unusual and pertinent points of history, and they are vividly revisited…. the book rises to poetic heights as Wiebe’s unerring sense of place allows it to soar…”
–London Free Press

“There are breathtaking scenes infused with poignant beauty…”
–Times-Colonist (Victoria)

“Rudy Wiebe has written his epic….richly satisfying and worth reading and pondering again and again.”
–Kitchener-Waterloo Record

“Wiebe succeeds in making [history] dramatic, intriguing, romantic and tragic.”
–Calgary Herald

Praise for A Discovery of Strangers:

“A work of extraordinary originality and beauty.”
–The Globe and Mail

“A pleasure of the first order — the pleasure of true art.”
—Edmonton Journal

Praise for Stolen Life:

“So rich...I couldn’t put it down.”
–Ann-Marie MacDonald

“The most powerful book I’ve ever read.... Insightful, poetic, gripping.”
— The Hamilton Spectator

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Vintage Canada (September 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0676973418
• ISBN-13: 978-0676973419
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,415,087 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rudy's Good Book, December 11, 2002

By A Customer

If you like good writing, especially when it's grounded in real history, then you'll like Rudy Wiebe's Sweeter Than All the World.. He takes on the story of a Mennonite family over time, a nearly epic family chronicle covering more than five hundred years, and succeeds astonishingly well. The chapters alternate between the historical/fictional stories and the contemporary story of Adam Wiebe and his family The three epigraphs give the reader a good entry into the novel, especially one from the poet Joseph Brodsky: "You're coming home again. What does that mean?" Answering that question is not so simple for Adam Wiebe, the main character. We watch as he loses his childhood home, then finds a home with his wife and family, only to lose it again, partly through his own actions but also because, like the rest of us, he has cast himself adrift in an over-hyped, noisy and fragmented contemporary society. You don't have to be Mennonite to recognize the emptiness of Adam's a long period of self-imposed wandering and exile. He searches to find not just himself but also to recover what he has at the opening of the novel - a sense of being at home. When her parents separate, his daughter too becomes a global wanderer, trying to lose what she feels is the heavy burden of her family past. When she disappears, Adam's wandering takes on a double purpose as he tries to find both his daughter and a place for himself within a recovered family past.
Home, for Rudy Wiebe, is not simply cast as a physical or geographical place and he makes no bones about the essentially spiritual nature of Adam's quest. In contrast to the wanderings of the earlier Mennonite families, forced by persecution and war, Adam's jaunts from lover to lover and airport to airport would seem almost trivial if they were not so painful for him and so familiar to us. As he did in The Blue Mountains of China, Wiebe's careful use of historical sources is convincingly interwoven with the voices of his semi/fictional characters. I enjoyed checking up on some of the historical references he cites at the novel's end and discovered just how historically accurate much of his "fictional" material really is. What finally knits the generations together here is storytelling. Their faith and beliefs, their lives, their accomplishments and their suffering are passed along in the family stories, a force for ill to the young Adam, but ultimately a powerful force good. Wiebe clearly believes that we need to strike a balance between forgetting the past and obsessing over it, and he comes down on the side of memory. His fictional Wiebe family finally shares the stories, not as a way of burdening the younger generation, but of a way of providing them with the roots they need to grow.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Quite What I was Expecting, April 23, 2004

By	dave__ "dave__" (USA) - See all my reviews

I read this book because it was recommended on Amazon's page for _The Russländer_ by Sandra Birdsell. I really enjoyed that book, so I thought that I would give "Sweeter Than All the World" a try.

And, as the title of my review says, "Sweeter" wasn't exactly what I was expecting. One thing I enjoy in any novel, especially a "historical" one (in addition to a good story) is getting a good feel of what it was like to live at that particular time and place. "Sweeter Than All the World" has that it parts, but it really contains two threads. One thread contains various interesting stories about Mennonites throughout history, while the other thread is Adam trying to make sense of himself, and his history, present, and future.

Personally, I found the "20th Century Adam" chapters to be tedious, but I don't want to be too discouraging if this sort of thing is your cup of tea.

However, be aware that this definitely isn't a historical novel along the lines of Michener's "Poland" or "Alaska".

3.0 out of 5 stars Hmm, January 26, 2009

By	Elizabeth Bennett (Michigan USA) - See all my reviews

A multi-century history of Mennonites, specifically Wiebes. What is the theme? What is sweeter than all the world? Familial love? He's not an easy man to read, but I enjoyed this one because of the history. Have to get hardcovers for my children before they're hard to find.