Pain is one of the most uncomfortable feelings. Especially when it is unwanted, which is always. As human beings, we would never desire or seek pain in the right set of circumstances, yet we receive pain exactly because of wanting and seeking. When we denied what we want, it is painful. While we might avoid pain for its discomfort and unwantability, on a deeper level, we cannot deny its importance in making us the better version of ourselves. Happiness is fine, it is great actually, but why should one ever need to grow or change if things as always going according to one’s preferences.
And should the heaven be realized one day, I too would want to live an eternally happy existence, free from the burdens of consciousness and the fear of pain. But since we live on Earth, as highly imperfect and complicated human being, we can’t but face the ugly realities of life. Pain can be destructive. My mother always says that pain never kills someone (maybe disease does or the Angel Israel). She’s both right and wrong. I know pain cannot literally kill us on its own, but usually it is the driving force behind one dying or wanting to die.
Just like the protagonist’s sister in this novel, Elfrieda: who due to an utter incapability of living, desperately wants to kill herself. Living, for her, is just pain. And since pain isn’t killing her, she wants her sister, the protagonist Yolandi, to take her to Switzerland for their legal ‘assisted dying’ program. But as I discussed earlier on, pain is sudden; it usually has a history to it.
At the start of the novel, these young sisters, Elfrieda being six years older than Yolandi, have a pretty cozy and knitted-family life. Their old house is being taken away since they’ve had to move to another one, and we see how adventurous, funny, sharp, and humorous their family life is through them having to change their house. A few chapters later, we meet Elf in a psych ward of a hospital for having attempted suicide. She’s forty-plus years old and poor Yoli is there to take care of her, along with Elf’s partner nic, their visiting mother, auntie and the hospital nurse Janice.
It’s quite a drastic shift from where the novel started, but Toews, in between the present events, gives us sneak-peaks into the history of the pain that’s making Elf take her life. A brilliant and almost genius pianist, Elf has no reason to be so hopelessly depressed. With her Europe tour coming, she has about everything one could ask for: talent, love, and a good life. But her father had committed suicide which had affected Elf in a grave manner, which might also show the genetical link for her depression.
But what we mostly get from the reading the novel is that she wants to kill herself, at all cost, despite the lack of convincing reasons. It reminded me of how I suffered with depression as well: reasonlessly.
So, collecting from everything I’ve talked about this novel, one could conclude that it is a very grim novel. I certainly thought that way. But I also knew it would be light and funny – just read the title of the book. And it is.
The fact that Yoli, her mother, Nic, and everyone involved with this obsessive suicide/rescue mission, can actually laugh every now and then (and yes, cry right after also) shows how endurable the burdens of this life can be; that how comical the seriousness of heavy living actually is. Suicide, being one of the saddest events in a human life, tackled with such lightness and generosity bears hope for the ‘staying’ ones to keep on living, fearing a little the ‘worst of all things.’
“The ground for tenderness is more pain”, I wrote the other day, for while my pain may drive some to take their lives, others to turn bitter and cold, for those who truly welcome and embrace that ‘uncomfortable’ feeling of pain, it actually works magic. It turns us softer, gentler, kinder, and readier for life with its sorrows and bliss.
Toews
novel is important because it teaches us the art of living lightly when faced
the heavy realities of life; to laugh before we cry, to hug after we fight, and
to keep writing letter in fond memories. The chapter 10 and the letters Yoli
writes to Elf: enough to melt any reader’s heart.
Ratings: 4/5 **** (June 16, 2022_)