A Complicated Kindness Book Report

My summative novel, A Complicated Kindness, by Miriam Toews was a little bit of an odd one. Throughout this dark, yet uplifting novel, we follow the life of the main character Naomi Nickel, who is shortly nick-named Nomi. Nomi is a sixteen year old girl living in strict mennonite town that she does not belong in. She tries to deal with a father who doesn’t necessarily care about her, a best friend who is stuck with an unknown illness in a hospital, and a completely useless boyfriend. But most importantly, she has to deal with the fact that her mom and sister fled town three years ago to seek a better life…. without her. To top it all off, the town she lives in is completely awful. Their only income is a run-down heritage museum site and a chicken slaughterhouse. Also, as mennonites, the town’s occupants are expected to go to church, keep their faith in mind at all time, keep up in their jobs or studies, …show more content…
Throughout the novel, we are thrown back and forth between a time when Nomi’s Mom and sister were still in town, and three years later when Nomi was left alone to deal with her father. Honestly, I’ve read a lot of predictable books before and they got very boring, very quickly. But with this book, it always switched between time frames so I didn’t know what was going to happen next. My interest level was high page after page and I always looked forward to reading. This book was also very refreshing, mostly because the topic was random. I mean, how often do you hear of a girl rebelling in a mennonite town? Mennonites are supposed to be civil, follow the rules of the town, and love their religion, but Nomi Nickel does the exact opposite. She listens to obscene music, can’t stop touching her boyfriend, and smokes her fair share of marijuana. The experiences Nomi goes through are abnormal for a mennonite girl and thats why I was stayed