Summer of My Amazing Luck

Summer of My Amazing Luck
Author: Miriam Toews
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010-01-08
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0307375595

A Novel by the Governor General’s Literary Award—winning author of A Complicated Kindness Lucy Van Alstyne always thought she’d grow up to become a forest ranger. Instead, at the age of eighteen, she’s found herself with quite a different job title: Single Mother on the Dole. As for the father of her nine-month-old son, Dillinger, well…it could be any of number of guys. At the Have-a-Life housing project–aptly nicknamed Half-a-Life by those who call it home–Lucy meets Lish, a zany and exuberant woman whose idea of fashion is a black beret with a big silver spider brooch stuck on it. Lish is the mother of four daughters, two by a man on welfare himself and twins from a one-week stand with a fire-eating busker who stole her heart–and her wallet. Living on the dole isn’t a walk in the park for Lucy and Lish. Dinner almost always consists of noodles. Transportation means pushing a crappy stroller through the rain. Then there are the condescending welfare agents with their dreaded surprise inspections. And just across the street is Serenity Place, another housing project with which Half-a-Life is engaged in a full-on feud. When the women aren’t busy snitching on each other, they’re spreading rumours–or plotting elaborate acts of revenge. In the middle of a mosquito-infested rainy season, Lish and Lucy decide to escape the craziness of Half-A-Life by taking to the road. In a van held together with coat-hangers and electrical tape and crammed to the hilt with kids and toys, they set off to Colorado in search Lish’s lost love and the father of her twins. Whether they’ll find him is questionable, but the down-and-out adventure helps Lucy realize that this just may be the summer of her amazing luck. Miriam Toews’s debut novel, Summer of My Amazing Luck opens our eyes to a social class rarely captured in fiction. At once hilarious and heartbreaking, it is inhabited by an unforgettable and poignant group of characters. Shortlisted for both the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award and for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, it also earned Miriam the John Hirsch Award for the Most Promising Manitoba Writer.

Summer of My Amazing Luck

Summer of My Amazing Luck
Author: Miriam Toews
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2019-04-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1640091866

"[A] memorable portrait of a struggling young person who finds unexpected resilience and peace . . . Hilarious, heartbreaking, and poignant." —Booklist Miriam Toews welcomes her readers to the Have–a–Life housing project (better known as Half–a–Life). The welfare regulations are endless and the rate–fink neighbors won't mind their own business. Lucy Von Alstyne sends fictitious letters to her friend Alicia, pretending to be the father of Alicia's twins. When the two mothers and their five children set off on a journey to find him, facing along the way the complications of living in poverty and raising fatherless children, Lucy discovers this just may be the summer of her amazing luck.

A Complicated Kindness

A Complicated Kindness
Author: Miriam Toews
Publisher: Catapult
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2019-01-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1582438897

Winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award In this stunning coming-of-age novel, the award-winning author of Women Talking balances grief and hope in the voice of a witty, beleaguered teenager whose family is shattered by fundamentalist Christianity "Half of our family, the better–looking half, is missing," Nomi Nickel tells us at the beginning of A Complicated Kindness. Left alone with her sad, peculiar father, her days are spent piecing together why her mother and sister have disappeared and contemplating her inevitable career at Happy Family Farms, a chicken slaughterhouse on the outskirts of East Village. Not the East Village in New York City where Nomi would prefer to live, but an oppressive town founded by Mennonites on the cold, flat plains of Manitoba, Canada. This darkly funny novel is the world according to the unforgettable Nomi, a bewildered and wry sixteen–year–old trapped in a town governed by fundamentalist religion and in the shattered remains of a family it destroyed. In Nomi's droll, refreshing voice, we're told the story of an eccentric, loving family that falls apart as each member lands on a collision course with the only community any of them have ever known. A work of fierce humor and tragedy by a writer who has taken the American market by storm, this searing, tender, comic testament to family love will break your heart. “Brilliant.” —New York Times Book Review “A darkly funny and provocative novel.” —O, the Oprah Magazine

Good Luck with That

Good Luck with That
Author: Kristan Higgins
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2018-08-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 045148939X

One of Purewow’s “Best Beach Reads of Summer 2018” Winner for Best Book of 2018 of the Fresh Fiction Awards! New York Times bestselling author Kristan Higgins is beloved for her heartfelt novels filled with humor and wisdom. Now, she tackles an issue every woman deals with: body image and self-acceptance. Emerson, Georgia, and Marley have been best friends ever since they met at a weight-loss camp as teens. When Emerson tragically passes away, she leaves one final wish for her best friends: to conquer the fears they still carry as adults. For each of them, that means something different. For Marley, it's coming to terms with the survivor's guilt she's carried around since her twin sister's death, which has left her blind to the real chance for romance in her life. For Georgia, it's about learning to stop trying to live up to her mother's and brother's ridiculous standards, and learning to accept the love her ex-husband has tried to give her. But as Marley and Georgia grow stronger, the real meaning of Emerson's dying wish becomes truly clear: more than anything, she wanted her friends to love themselves. A novel of compassion and insight, Good Luck With That tells the story of two women who learn to embrace themselves just the way they are.

All My Puny Sorrows

All My Puny Sorrows
Author: Miriam Toews
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 339
Release: 2019-10-15
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1635574986

From the bestselling author of Women Talking, a "wrenchingly honest, darkly funny novel" (Entertainment Weekly). Elf and Yoli are sisters. While on the surface Elfrieda's life is enviable (she's a world-renowned pianist, glamorous, wealthy, and happily married) and Yolandi's a mess (she's divorced and broke, with two teenagers growing up too quickly), they are fiercely close-raised in a Mennonite household and sharing the hardship of Elf's desire to end her life. After Elf's latest attempt, Yoli must quickly determine how to keep her family from falling apart while facing a profound question: what do you do for a loved one who truly wants to die? All My Puny Sorrows is a deeply personal story that is as much comedy as it is tragedy, a goodbye grin from the friend who taught you how to live.

The Good Luck Of Right Now

The Good Luck Of Right Now
Author: Matthew Quick
Publisher: Harper Collins
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2014-02-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1443425877

For almost four decades, Bartholomew Neil has done nothing but live with his mom. When she begins calling him Richard—for reasons unknown—and then dies, Bartholomew is woefully unprepared.” A clue comes in the form of a “Free Tibet” letter he finds in his mother’s underwear drawer, and so Bartholomew awkwardly starts his new life, writing Richard Gere a series of highly intimate fan letters. Jung’s theory of synchronicity, the mystery of women, the Dalai Lama’s teachings, alien abduction, cat telepathy and the Catholic Church are all explored in depth by Bartholomew’s epistles—but mostly the letters outline one man’s heartbreakingly earnest attempt to assemble a family of his own. A struggling priest, a “girlbrarian,” her foul-mouthed brother and Richard Gere (well, sort of) join the quest. In a rented Ford Focus, they travel to Canada in search of Bartholomew’s biological father and end up finding so much more.

Fight Night

Fight Night
Author: Miriam Toews
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2021-10-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1635578183

"Move over, Scout Finch! There's a new contender for feistiest girl in fiction, and her name is Swiv." -USA Today, "Best Books of the Year" "Toews is a master of dialogue." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice "A revelation." -Richard Russo NPR Best Books of the Year * Shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize * Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Finalist * Indie Next Pick * Amazon Editors' Pick * Apple Book of the Month From the bestselling author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows, a compassionate, darkly humorous, and deeply wise novel about three generations of women. “You're a small thing,” Grandma writes, “and you must learn to fight.” Swiv's Grandma, Elvira, has been fighting all her life. From her upbringing in a strict religious community, she has fought those who wanted to take away her joy, her independence, and her spirit. She has fought to make peace with her loved ones when they have chosen to leave her. And now, even as her health fails, Grandma is fighting for her family: for her daughter, partnerless and in the third term of a pregnancy; and for her granddaughter Swiv, a spirited nine-year-old who has been suspended from school. Cramped together in their Toronto home, on the precipice of extraordinary change, Grandma and Swiv undertake a vital new project, setting out to explain their lives in letters they will never send. Alternating between the exuberant, precocious voice of young Swiv and her irrepressible, tenacious Grandma, Fight Night is a love letter to mothers and grandmothers, and to all the women who are still fighting-painfully, ferociously- for a way to live on their own terms.

Summer of My Amazing Luck

Summer of My Amazing Luck
Author: Chris Craddock
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2007
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9781897109182

Summer of My Amazing Luck is the story of Lucy and Lish, two single mothers who live in the Winnipeg housing project Have-a-Life. Lucy says she "didn't grieve properly" when her mother was murdered, and tried to fill her emptiness with sexual encounters instead. When she became pregnant, she couldn't really say who the father of her child was. Now Lucy and her infant son Dill are in Have-a-Life, trying to survive in the welfare system. Her best friend Lish has her own troubles. She pines for Gotcha, the street performer who stole her heart along with her wallet. So Lucy decides to bring Gotcha back in a series of postcards. But maybe Lucy's made it too real. When Lish gets a postcard telling her Gotcha is heading to Denver, she decides they have to find him. They set out in a beat-up old borrowed van, full of toys and kids. With all the humour, compassion, and intelligence of Miriam Toews' novel, this inventive stage adaptation takes audiences on a hilarious and heartbreaking journey as Lucy discovers that this may be the summer when everything changes.

Summer of L.U.C.K.

Summer of L.U.C.K.
Author: Laura Segal Stegman
Publisher: Oghma Creative Media
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2022-11-28
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 163373787X

All Things Are Possible Eleven-year-old stuttering Darby believes she's supposed to be perfect, just like her mother demands. But summer away at camp promises temporary escape. There, she befriends twelve-year-old Justin, who hasn’t uttered a word since his dad died, and ten-year-old Naz, who is struggling to learn English. When mysterious calliope music from a nearby warehouse grants the trio power to communicate without words, they sneak inside to find out why. After the abandoned building bursts into a full-sized carnival with magical rides, they're greeted by the ghost of Leroy Usher, Carnival King, who can’t rest until his property brings joy to children once again. He asks for their help convincing his estranged sons and daughter to restore the carnival to its former glory before summer's end. In return, Mr. Usher promises he'll teach Darby, Justin, and Naz how to find their voices. With each challenge they face, the kids’ confidence grows, and they learn they're capable of accomplishing so much more than they ever imagined. But will it be enough to persuade the Usher siblings to bring the carnival back to life instead of selling the property for demolition?

Swing Low

Swing Low
Author: Miriam Toews
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2001
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781559705875

"One morning Mel Toews put on his coat and hat and walked out of town, prepared to die. A loving husband and father, faithful member of the Mennonite church, and immensely popular school teacher, he was a pillar of his close-knit community. Yet after a lifetime of struggle, he could no longer face the darkness of manic depression. Now his daughter Miriam, an award-winning writer, has given her father a voice for his whole story. In Swing Low, Miriam recounts Mel's life as she imagines he would have told it, right up to the day he took his final walk. Toews takes us deep inside the experience of depression, but she also gives us winsome and hilarious tales of country life: growing up on a farm, courting a wife, becoming a teacher, and rearing a strong, happy family in the midst of private torment." --