A COMPLICATED KINDNESS

Her uncle, known as The Mouth, is head of the church, responsible for the harsh laws and cruel ''shunning'', yet that doesn''t stop Nomi falling for the town''s most unsuitable boy - Travis. In such a secretive and god-fearing community, Nomi finds it impossible to find ways to express her many and growing passions. And despite her wish to keep everything together and look after her father, Nomi finds herself drawn towards revelations and self destruction, with Travis at her side. A 16-year-old rebels against the conventions of her strict Mennonite community and tries to come to terms with the collapse of her family in this insightful, irreverent coming-of-age novel. In bleak rural Manitoba, Nomi longs for her older sister, Tash (''she was so earmarked for damnation it wasn''t even funny''), and mother, Trudie, each of whom has recently fled fundamentalist Christianity and their town. Her gentle, uncommunicative father, Ray, isn''t much of a sounding board as Nomi plunges into bittersweet memory and grapples with teenage life in a ''kind of a cult with pretend connections to some normal earthly conventions.'' Once a ''curious, hopeful child'' Nomi now relies on biting humor as her life spins out of control—she stops attending school, shaves her head and wanders around in a marijuana-induced haze—while Ray sells off most of their furniture, escapes on all-night drives and increasingly withdraws into himself. Still, she and Ray are linked in a tender, if fragile, partnership as each slips into despair. Though the narration occasionally unravels into distracting stream of consciousness, the unsentimental prose and the poignant character interactions sustain reader interest. Bold, tender and intelligent, this is a clear-eyed exploration of belief and belonging, and the irresistible urge to escape both.