A Truce That Is Not PeaceA Truce That Is Not Peace

"Why do you write?" the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempt at an answer from Toews--all unsatisfactory to the organizer--surfaces new layers of grief, guilt, and futility connected to her sister's suicide more than fifteen years ago. She has been keeping up, she realizes, an internal correspondence with her beloved sibling, attempting to fill a silence she can barely comprehend. As Toews turns to face that silence, we come to see that the question "why I write" is as impossible to answer as deciding whether to live life as a comedy or a tragedy.