51 pages • 1 hour read
Miriam ToewsAll My Puny Sorrows
Miriam ToewsFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 9-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Yoli remembers how Lottie’s life changed after Elf left for Europe years prior. She went back to school and “became a social worker and then a therapist” (131). She gave secret sessions at the house to Mennonite women. The community disapproved of therapy. Yoli remembers asking Elf questions about Lottie’s clients and their mental health when they’d come to the house.
Yoli and Lottie collect Tina from the airport. In the car, Yoli holds Lottie’s shoulder and Tina’s hand. Seven years ago, Tina’s daughter, Leni, died by suicide. Jack had died three years prior. Yoli silently considers the connections between these events.
The family meets up with Nic at the hospital. Julie joins too. Elf is on a respirator because the bleach harmed her throat and internal organs. Later, Yoli watches Nic talk to the doctor through a glass window. Her mind drifts into the past, remembering the year Elf visited for Christmas and refused to join the family downstairs for dinner. Yoli locked herself in the bathroom with Elf and begged her to come down. Elf kept insisting that she couldn’t do it and started hitting her head on the wall. Finally, Yoli threatened to hurt herself if Elf didn’t join the family, which surprised Elf.
Yoli recalls another memory from when she was nine. Jack was trying to sell placemats he’d made to truck stops and took Yoli on a road trip with him. The trip was unsuccessful and Jack was depressed afterward. Not long later, Jack solicited Elf’s help to petition the town to let him open an independent library. She helped him get the signatures he needed.
Nic updates Yoli on Elf’s condition. Afterward, Yoli goes outside to smoke one of the cigarettes Julie left for her. Meanwhile, she texts Dan and studies the river.
Yoli rejoins Lottie and Tina inside. Nic texts her from the cafeteria to say that he updated Claudio on Elf’s condition and he’s working on canceling the tour. Later, Yoli visits with Elf alone after Nic goes home. She considers Elf’s request to go to Switzerland, still unnerved by the idea and afraid of being arrested. They sit in the dark in silence together until Yoli confronts Elf for hurting people by trying to end her life. The nurse comes in and turns on the light, apologizing for interrupting when she realizes that the sisters are crying. Still upset, Yoli leaves. However, she runs back inside to apologize to Elf. She then promises Elf to consider her Switzerland plan.
Chapter 10 Summary
On her way to meet her family for dinner, Yoli thinks about death. She once wrote an article on assisted death and tries to remember her research. At the restaurant, she texts Finbar, who’s a lawyer, and asks if she’d be “charged with murder” if she assisted Elf’s suicide (150). She then texts Nora before heading inside.
After saying goodnight to Lottie and Tina later, Yoli calls Radek. Then she drives to Nic’s and studies the house from the car. Afterward, she visits Julie. They drink wine on the porch again and Yoli tells her about Switzerland. Julie doesn’t think that it’s a good idea. The friends sing and play the organ for a while before Yoli goes home.
At the hospital the next day, Yoli gets upset when a man scolds her in the lot for almost hitting his car. She starts ranting about what a bad person he is and directs her attacks at his wife, too. She runs into the wife in the elevator later and apologizes, but the woman doesn’t say anything. Inside the hospital, Yoli tells Tina what happened in the parking lot. Tina assures her that the woman will forgive her one day and Yoli will sense her forgiveness, even if it’s years later.
In Elf’s room, Yoli gets upset with Elf and accuses her of being selfish and disregarding her feelings. They continue arguing and Yoli gets increasingly upset. Elf argues that Yoli doesn’t understand despair. They fall into silence. Finally Elf asks Yoli to talk to her about something else. Still upset, Yoli tries to reiterate how important their relationship is. Claudio appears with flowers, interrupting the conversation. He’s kind and understanding with Elf. In the hall afterward, he implores Yoli to keep Elf alive because she’s special. Back in Elf’s room, the sisters talk about books before Elf falls asleep. Meanwhile, Yoli tries coming up with titles for her novel. Finally she gets up and finds Elf’s psychiatrist. She’s angry with him for ignoring Elf’s needs simply because Elf hasn’t been taking her pills or eating. She rants at him for a long time, but he dismisses her concerns.
Yoli apologizes to the nurses “for causing a scene” (173). On her way out, Elf’s friend calls Yoli to ask if she should send Elf flowers. Yoli gets distracted imagining the ideal psychiatrist during the call.
Chapter 11 Summary
Yoli walks back to Lottie’s apartment, following the river. Lottie and Tina aren’t home when she returns. She uses the time to research assisted dying. Then, Lottie calls to say that Tina fainted twice while they were out and now they’re in the ER. On her way back to the hospital, Yoli thinks about cardiologists and psychiatrists. In Tina’s room, Yoli learns that Tina had a cardiac event. The doctors are hopeful that she’ll recover soon. Afterward, Yoli runs into a family from East Village in the waiting room. When Nic and Lottie join her, Lottie informs the family what’s happening with Tina. Yoli and Nic usher her out.
Yoli and Lottie leave the hospital. On the way, they discuss Yoli’s manuscript. Then the car breaks down and won’t start again. They walk to a nearby restaurant and enjoy themselves drinking wine and talking. They walk home afterward while the car is towed to the shop. Later, the mechanic calls to say that the car is dead.
That night, Yoli reads more about assisted death, specifically in Mexico. She still doesn’t know what to do. When she closes her eyes, she imagines Elf at peace.
Yoli calls Nic to tell him about Switzerland and Mexico but backs down during the call. Nic informs her that he’s leaving for Spain with his dad the next day. Yoli assures him that she’ll look out for Elf, insisting that he needs a break. They both start to cry before hanging up.
Chapters 9-11 Analysis
Elf’s return to the hospital impacts the Von Riesen family’s security and balance, challenging them to ask difficult questions about the future. In particular, Yoli begins to perform more concerted research into assisted dying in Mexico and Switzerland, Nic tries to deal with the fallout after Elf’s canceled tour, and Yoli’s aunt Tina comes to town to support the family. These intersecting subplots capture the Impact of Mental Health on Family Dynamics. In the meantime, the narrative begins to shift more frequently into the past. These temporal shifts capture Yoli’s attempt to understand her situation via her generational trauma and family history. Allusions to her cousin Leni’s and father Jack’s deaths by suicide are significant in this regard. The scene in which Yoli, Lottie, and Tina drive from the airport to the hospital captures this network of conflicts:
I have one hand on my mother’s shoulder and the other slung over the backseat, holding on to Tina’s hand, so we’re a human chain. Are Mennonites a depressed people or is it just us? My aunt Tina lost Leni, her daughter, my cousin, to suicide seven years ago, three years after my father killed himself. We’ve been here before. Everything is a repeat, another take (134).
The image of Yoli holding onto her mother and aunt illustrates her desire to console and protect her family members. At the same time, the “human chain” represents generational trauma and the mental health conditions the family has faced over the years. The novel is thus using this moment to question whether shared family experiences or their environments cause depression. Furthermore, Yoli’s interiority conveys her desire to understand the source of her family’s unrest and to trace it either to her immediate family members or to her communal and cultural past. The final wording, “another take,” implicitly compares the family’s experiencing to the filmmaking process, conveying Yoli’s view that each generation has a chance to change things.
Despite Yoli’s attempts to stay strong for her family, her behaviors and narration become increasingly harried over the course of these chapters. Her mind shifts into the past more and more often, conveying her inability to stay grounded in the present as this temporal realm is defined by anxiety and fear for her sister. Meanwhile, her interactions with her sister become more intense because she’s desperate to keep Elf alive. In the preceding chapters, Yoli actively tried to encourage Elf by telling her happy stories and distracting her with amusing anecdotes from the past. In these chapters, Yoli begins to confront Elf in a more forthright manner. Such scenes of dialogue have an aggressive, frustrated mood which captures Yoli’s internal unrest. For example, in Chapter 9, she asks Elf, “How do you think Nic feels? Do you know what you’re doing? You’re killing people” (146). Yoli is trying to impress upon Elf how her actions are affecting their family. At the same time, her words reveal how hurt she feels by Elf and thus her inability to reconcile with Elf’s mental state.
The repeated allusions to assisted dying and scenes of Yoli researching her sister’s request capture Yoli’s desire for control. She asks Julie for advice about the situation because she fears that she’ll “feel guilty for the rest of [her] life” and because (152), despite her research, she feels “no closer to making a decision about killing [her] sister” (154). Yoli’s indelible bond with Elf makes her eager to help her sister in any way possible. At the same time, Elf’s despair and disillusionment with life complicate Yoli’s engagement with reality. She wants to support Elf but is reluctant to support her in the way Elf asks her to. Her research into assisted dying changes the narrative stakes, while raising complex questions about the individual’s right to die. This conflict is particularly tense for Yoli because others expect her to keep Elf alive at any cost: Nic wants her to care for Elf while he’s in Spain; Claudio begs Yoli to protect Elf because of her musical career; and Lottie relies on her to look after Elf after Tina is admitted to the hospital. Yoli is thus caught between her love for her family and her love for her sister, which is a microcosm of a broader sociopolitical conflict between individual agency and societal duty to preserve life.
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