by Karen X. Tulchinsky, 2003
It takes a fairly audacious author to name a contemporary Canadian novel after the foundational literature of Judaism, but while Karen Tulchinsky’s book may not achieve the significance of the original five books of Moses, there’s a good basis for the reference. For Tulchinsky at least, the times and incidents that are the basis of the novel are a part of the foundation of the Jewish experience in Canada.
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.
