This was a lovely coming of age novel. It had a very interesting narrator, this teenager called Nomi (Toews is all about weird names in her novels) who’s growing up in a weird, tiny religious town. She had a very interesting voice and even though I couldn’t really relate to her I liked her and wanted her to find happiness and freedom and peace of mind.

I found the bits about the Mennonite community very interesting as it was something I was barely aware of and certainly hadn’t read about before. Towes does a very good job in showing the reader just how trapped and isolated one could feel in a small town.

A nice passage:

“Heaven is always calm, with no wind. She said other stuff but I didn’t really understand it. I understood there was no wind in heaven. That’s partly why I love the wind that blows around in this town. It makes me feel like I’m in the world.“