All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews

I was not sold on this book until page 148, when I read these lines:

My mother tells Tina that she doesn’t like books where the protagonist is established as sad on page one. Okay, she’s sad! We get it, we know what sad is, and then the whole book is basically a description of the million and one ways in which our protagonist is sad. Gimme a break! Get on with it!

This is a book about deep, protracted, unrelenting sadness, and it knows it. Two sisters—Elf and Yoli—have each departed from the small conservative Mennonite town in Canada in which they grew up. Elf is an accomplished concert pianist who performs all over the world. Yoli is a writer of rodeo novels, in the midst of peripatetic relationships with men, and has broken all family rules by moving to Toronto. (“Nobody moves away from Winnipeg, especially to Toronto, and escapes condemnation. It’s like the opposite of the Welcome Wagon. It is like leaving the Crips for the Bloods.”) Both are grappling with their father’s suicide and Elf’s repeated suicide attempts.