Karen X. Tulchinsky
Auteur van Love Ruins Everything
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Statistieken
- Werken
- 13
- Ook door
- 5
- Leden
- 502
- Populariteit
- #49,320
- Waardering
- 3.6
- Besprekingen
- 5
- ISBNs
- 27
- Talen
- 1
The novel describes in concrete detail the pogroms that drove Jewish immigrants out of their Russian homeland and to a new promised land, and then of the struggles they faced in their new homes. It deals with tradition and family as sources of strength as well as limits to personal adaptation.
Tulchinsky brings together some key historical facts from the period and ties them into the Lapinsky family history. They face poverty in the 1930s, the oppressive antisemitism and almost equally oppressive heat and humidity. I had known a little of the history of antisemitism in Canada, but Tulchinksy makes it real with stories like blatant bypassing of a job application from the literary son of the family and the antisemitic riot at the Christie Pits baseball park. These incidents effect the family in dramatic ways, causing family splits that everyone regrets but can’t seem to change. They drive the central story of Sonny, who takes out his fury both in the army and in the boxing ring.
Through their telling and retelling of the family stories, the Lapinskys make their history and their connection to their culture a strong part of their life. But the private recriminations and reliving of their mistakes also lets it eat away at their mental health. And the guilt that family members feel comes back over and over and it works on them even after they have achieved successes in Canada. It continues to affect the contemporary narrator who is putting together notes for a family history.
The details of everyday life keep the story personal, a specific family story set against larger histories. Tulchinsky has clearly done a lot of research and uses it to create a particular time and place. Her description of the light in a shop in the stetl or the sound of horses hooves on a Toronto bring me as a reader right into the scene. For me, these details are one of the strengths of Tulchinsky’s writing.
Happily, Tulchinsky uses a light touch and humour as well as her historical research. In one comic spin on the stereotype of Jewish guilt, she works her way around five members of the family, each agonizing over how he or she is guilty for the debilitating injury of the youngest son. And the local lovable crime boss is almost comic in his characterization.
I would not have thought that I’d be very interested in a story that spends a lot of time on the inner life and the physical experience of a boxer, but Tulchinnsky makes the details and the life fascinating. She gets into Sonny’s life so closely that I often wondered if Tulchinsky had not taken up boxing herself.
If I have a criticism (beyond the occasional excess of details from the Toronto newspapers), it’s in the stories of the sons as young boys. It seemed to me sometimes that their thinking was too advanced for their ages – Sonny at 10, for example, is more focused and driven than anyone I’ve known at that age. Lenny is drawn into a literary world at 12, which is a little hard for me to imagine. I can agree that they live in times different from those I’m familiar with, but I think I’d have accepted more of their thinking if they had all been a few years older.
Nevertheless, I’m happy to have found the book and read it. It gives me a sense of Jewish and Canadian lives and how they are linked to the past, and how the past continues to relate to the present.… (meer)