Customer Reviews

Swing Low: A Life

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While many father memoirs are remarkable for their inventive excellence, few are as original and as powerful as Swing Low. In Swing Low: A Life, Miriam Toews imagines herself into her father's head, and brings him back to life as a narrative "I." Her imaginative accomplishment is all the more remarkable in that her father suffered from bipolar disease throughout his life, and eventually his depression became so deep and his mind so confused that that he committed suicide by stepping in front of a train. Such a story would be horrific and depressing, if it weren't for the calmness of the narrative voice. Toews' father was a Mennonite living and teaching in a small Manitoba town, and in her rendering of her father's interior life Toews also explores the tensions between self and community and teases out "the complicated kindness" which makes those tensions almost bearable. Despite the father's mental illness and suicide, Swing Low is a wonderfully sane and life affirming book.

Andre Gerard
Editor of Fathers: A Literary Anthology

Let me just say ... I did not enjoy Irma Voth - the fiction novel that Miriam Toews wrote and I reviewed just a few weeks ago. So it was with some trepidation that I picked Swing Low up off my shelf.

I was blown away.

Seriously, this book was nothing at all like Irma Voth. It was clear, concise, and a beautiful tribute to her father. Miriam's voice, as she speaks from her father's point of view, is crystal clear, heart-breaking and filled with love. I never once got the sense that he was, in any way shape or form, a bad man. I understood that he was sick, broken in a way, I understood that he loved his family - his wife and his children, and I wept when we came to the point of his last decision.

All through the book what spoke loudest to me was his daughters forgiveness. Miriam shows with complete clarity that, while she loved her father dearly, she cannot hate him for what he did. How powerful is that forgiveness? It spoke to my heart, it made me weep, it made me appreciate my own parents more and think about just how serious, how dreadful and how dangerous mental disorders can be.

Take the time to hug your family. Tell them you love them. Read this book if you need a good kick in the pants to remind you of how special they are.

This book must have been incredibly hard to write but we should thank Miriam Toews for seeing it through. This is a very insightful picture of one man's struggle and its ripple effect. She captured a perspective that many of us are lucky enough not to feel but that we need to understand in order to be supportive to others.

I really enjoyed reading "Complicated" but this book didn't have quite the same tone as complicated. It was still well written, but a little maudlin. I like to have a break from feeling low myself, and I think people DO read to escape, therefore, I can't say all that much was wrong with the book. It just wasn't a clear picture like Toews' other book was.