Swing Low: A Life by Miriam Toews
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

What’s Left After Words?

A biography of one’s little known father would seem a risky commercial venture. Make it first person and the rest of the family is likely to resent the presumption. Write it from the perspective of a man with advanced dementia, and total disaster can’t be far distant.

And yet Miriam Toews carries it off magnificently. The book, it turns out is only nominally about her father, Mel. Mainly it’s about her coping with what he left behind , namely an apparently inexplicable decision on his part to end his life. The book is therapy, in which she invents what was in his head based upon the facts of his life, those known to the intimate world of his Mennonite society, and those shared only within the family.

Despite the manner of his death, Mel is a hero to Miriam. In fact his suicide confirms his integrity. His life was a battle with his bipolar condition, his high functioning autism, and his complete inability to express himself in personal relationships. Yet he had overcome these handicaps to develop a loving marriage, raise a family, pursue a successful career as a teacher, and generate universal respect within his community.

Like any other history, Mel’s is a fiction. Miriam doesn’t actually know what thoughts Mel had. She only knows his behaviour, which seems confused, erratic and at times irascible. She sees him scribbling page after page nonsense, and intuits what he trying to do, that is, to tell his story. So she does the work of which he was incapable. That she can imagine herself as her father is a tribute to both of them. Especially because, as Miriam articulates for Mel, “There are no windows within the dark house of depression through which to see others, only mirrors.”

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