NATIONAL BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE 2025 HILARY WESTON WRITERS’ TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE 2025 NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY • TIME’s 10 Best Books of 2025 • Named a Best Book of 2025 by The Globe and Mail • CBC • The New Yorker • The Guardian • Lit Hub • The Irish Times • The Hill Times • Brooklyn Public Library

“[A Truce That Is Not Peace is a] discursive, revelatory new memoir. . . . in the vein of Joan Didion’s Blue Nights, or Alexandra Fuller’s Fi: written not only from the trenches of fresh loss but from the steadier perch of a generation-long hindsight.” —Lauren Christensen, The New York Times

“Both questions—why [Toews] writes and how to live with such grief—are ultimately unanswerable, but Toews creates beauty from that uncertainty.” —The Globe and Mail

“[A Truce That Is Not Peace] is a triumph—a meditation on writing, suicide, guilt and silence; a fragmented account of [Toews’s] life so far; and an illustration of why she’s one of Canada’s most admired writers. . . . Her work’s so intimate you worry you’re intruding, but it’s fine, she welcomes you in.” —The Guardian

“A Truce That Is Not Peace. . . . is a layered confrontation with the deaths, grief, and guilt that have animated [Toews’s] work for nearly 30 years, providing haunting insights on how to live after tragic loss. . . . In this way, A Truce That Is Not Peace reads like a culmination of Toews’s career-long project of keeping her family members alive—their joys as well as their sadness.” —The Atlantic

“Miriam Toews brings heart, bite and wit to all her work. . . . A well-developed sense of the absurd is her magic weight-lifter. . . . Both a tender tribute to Marjorie and a thought-provoking meditation on three linked themes: writing, silence and suicide. . . . Both very serious and very funny. Her frankness and wit recall Anne Lamott, minus the sermonizing, while her short bursts of epiphanies recall Jenny Offill. . . .There’s a lot of laughter in this memoir.” —The Wall Street Journal

“In this lyrical memoir, Toews explores her writing career with storytelling that is at once propulsive and recursive, using her work as evidence of both her success and her inability to escape her past. It’s bracing, candid reading.” —The Los Angeles Times

“Toews knows exactly how to extract hilarity from horrifying events. . . . A short, at times very funny account of some of the darkest moments in her life.” —The Times

“Segueing between the present and the past, Toews endeavours to find a link between silence, suicide and creativity. She does not shy away from her own vulnerability, and writes with both candour and humour.” —The Observer

“Playful, propulsive, and strange. . . . A Truce That Is Not Peace reveals a masterful writer exploring the inner workings of her own inquisitive mind.” —TIME

“Toews’ new genre-bending memoir—an astute reflection on both the significance and the inadequacy of language, a bittersweet and often wry retelling of impactful moments from her life, and a profoundly moving meditation on the frailty of memory and the permanence of loss—is nothing short of a masterpiece.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Wisecracks punctuate the meditative memoir A Truce That Is Not Peace in the same way that a swarm of bees might punctuate a sunny picnic: angry, demanding attention, ceaselessly buzzing. . . . It’s in the elliptical details, often of domestic life, that Toews communicates the messiness of survival.” —Alex Clark, The Spectator (UK)

“All of Toews’ books are outstanding but if you have not read her, this could be a great place to start.” ―Minnesota Star-Tribune

“[Miriam Toews] takes us and herself into the fundamentals of both her craft and her past in a piece of life writing that is erudite, deeply, darkly moving and heart-wrenchingly funny.” —Marie Claire (UK)

“Incandescent.” ―People

“[Miriam Toews’s] fine, fine writing. . . . [is] lyrical yet plainspoken, vivid and rich. There is intimacy in what Toews is willing to share and in the way she chooses to share it. Reading this memoir is like reading a journal: private, surprising, and vulnerable.” —Washington Independent Review of Books

“Both an anguished commonplace book and an exhilarating brainstorm. Its winds whistle and wail.” ―The New York Review of Books

“Toews’s prose has the power stop the reader in her tracks: ‘Silence and writing are, if not quite the same thing, then allies,’ Toews muses, ‘each a misdirection of the unspeakable, and each a way of holding on.’ At once modest and profound, this slim volume packs a major punch. Readers will be wowed.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Keenly observant. . . . A fine turn to nonfiction by a superbly accomplished storyteller.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Creatively structured, gorgeously written, and flat-out astonishing. . . . The reader is whirlwinded by experiences bizarre, comedic, tragic, and wondrous.” —Booklist

“Sardonic and original.” —Shelf Awareness

“Formally inventive and exquisitely executed. . . . An unforgettable exhumation of grief.” —BookPage

“The first time [Toews] has written about her life in nonfiction. The book began when a reader asked her, ‘Why do you write?’ Each answer felt unsatisfactory, which led her to explore what compels her to write—and what a moving, emotional result.” —Town & Country Magazine

“Beautiful, hilarious, devastating.” —Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train

“Original, autobiographical, deeply painful, funny. . . . A Truce That Is Not Peace is the best memoir you will read all year.” —Nick Hornby

“Curious and idiosyncratic and enjoyable.” —Zadie Smith

“Why do I write? Miriam Toews’s response to this impossible-to-answer prompt gives way to a haunting, tragi-comic, and incredibly moving inquiry into the landscapes and the people that define us; the parts of life that make no sense; and the things that, against all odds, keep us alive. A Truce That Is Not Peace is essential reading.” —Laura van den Berg

“Everything written by Miriam Toews is giant-like, full of its own internal humor and strange weather. In trying to answer why she writes, Toews ends by answering why she lives. A beautiful, breathtaking memoir.” —Ingrid Rojas Contreras

“This small book is bursting with hilariousness and suffering and rage and also so much tenderness that the pages are practically flying off like paper-airplane love letters. I would have read another thousand chapters.” —Catherine Newman

“An affirmation of Life in all its richness and variety. This remarkable book will live forever.” —Celia Paul
“Toews has done something very rare: shown us a true inner world.” —Samuel Graydon

“Piercing and distilled, a masterpiece in vulnerability and performance.” —Hannah Pittard

“[A Truce That Is Not Peace] offers a complete kaleidoscope of emotions, at once melancholy and hopeful, grief-stricken and life affirming. . . . Heartfelt, honest and funny. . . . [Toews’s] life lessons are hard earned, but thankfully for us, she’s written them all down.” —Cariad Lloyd