Irma Voth and The Forgotten Waltz: Two Voices

I read two novels both written in the voice of a young woman, and these very different voices are wonderfully evoked by the authors. In Anne Enright's The Forgotten Waltz a 33 year old Irish woman careens through marriage and an affair with a married man, in which there is precious little romance. Enright's prose perfectly captures the voice and world-view of this woman: the carelessness, her disregard of consequences. There's not much more of a tale here, but the voice is the heart of the matter.  Miriam Toews' Irma Voth is a more substantial story of a late-teen woman who leaves her Mennonite family in rural Mexico, with two much younger sisters, to escape the repression of their father. There is an fertile conceit of a filmmaker who employs Irma as a translator on his film about a Mennonite couple. Events revealed towards the end of the novel add a layer of deep reflection for her. Irma is quite uneducated in books and the world. Toews perfectly captures this very different voice: the uncertainty, the other-worldiness, the complete unawareness of modern life. First person novels can be a risky business, but Toews  and Enright have both nailed it.