
The Flying Troutmans, by Miriam Toews
Suicidal single mothers, delinquent teenagers and unwashed children sound like the ingredients for a standard-issue misery memoir with an embossed, hand-scripted title and a toddler in tears on the cover. Fortunately, Miriam Toews has instead shaken them with wit, warmth and a firm pinch of absurdity, and produced a grittily sparkling cocktail of a novel.
The Flying Troutmans takes a bleak premise, adds pitch-perfect, fully human characters and makes it, if not laugh-out-loud funny, at least difficult to read without a couple of...

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