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June 28, 2002
Karen X. out with new novel
Feeling of community permeates the mix of gay and Jewish cultures.
Daniel Mate SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Karen X. Tulchinsky is a busy woman these days. The Vancouver-based
writer is just back home from a year in Toronto, where she was a
resident in the Professional Screenwriting Program at the Canadian
Film Centre, founded by Norman Jewison of Moonstruck and
Hurricane fame. She's already hard at work on a new screenplay
and trying to familiarize herself with the B.C. film industry.
Amid all this excitement, she has a new book that's just been published
by Raincoast Books. Love and Other Ruins, her second novel,
is the sequel to the similarly titled Love Ruins Everything,
a bittersweet comedy that delighted readers and critics.
Following the lives and loves of two cousins, Nomi and Henry Rabinovitch
– both Canadian, Jewish and gay – the first novel blazed
through topics of family, culture, sexuality, AIDS and good old-fashioned
heartbreak with wit and compassion. San Fransisco's Bay Area
Reporter selected Love Ruins Everything as one of the
top 10 novels of 1998. The Globe and Mail called it "very
funny, but also deadly serious," noting that Tulchinsky "not
only writes adeptly and with passion, she also has something important
to say."
This second instalment had to happen, said Tulchinsky, since both
she and her readers were curious to find out what was going to happen
to the characters introduced in the first book. "In Love
and Other Ruins, I developed some of the minor characters who
had smaller roles in the first book, like Henry's mother and father
for example, and some of Nomi's friends in San Francisco."
Tulchinsky explained that her characters tend to emerge as an ensemble.
"I'll start with a main character and before I know it, that
character's mother enters the picture, then her grandmother, sisters
or brothers, roommate, friends, lover, workmate – it never
stops. The whole community gets in on the act."
This feeling of community permeates Tulchinsky's writing. Both main
characters are surrounded by a vast array of vivid supporting players.
Nomi, living in San Fransisco at the novel's outset, is part of
a boisterous social group of lesbians (and a couple of gay men)
who convene to eat, drink, flirt and share in each other's triumphs
and calamities. Henry, who is HIV-positive and living in Toronto,
has two distinct groups he has to contend with: the gay activist
community, which is struggling to make its voice heard while dealing
daily with the horrific reality of AIDS, and his own endearingly
crazy Jewish family, which includes a wily ex-mobster of a father,
his self-absorbed mother and his bubbe, whose exact age is a mortal
secret. The meeting of gay and Jewish cultures provides ample opportunity
for Tulchinsky to mix comedy with turmoil, or as she puts it, "finding
the laugh in every tear."
And this is, Tulchinsky stressed, as much a Jewish book as a gay
one, like its predecessor.
"The heterosexual Jewish characters are prominent throughout
and will seem familiar," she said.
Tulchinsky grew up in a traditional Jewish family and her parents
are still active in a Conservative synagogue.
"I've always been strongly identified as a Jew. As a writer,
I've always been out as a Jew and as a lesbian," said Tulchinsky,
adding that her diverse cast of characters reflects the multifaceted
social prism of her own life. "My personal world is multicultural.
My partner is Japanese Canadian, my friends are from many different
cultural backgrounds, so my characters tend to reflect that reality."
Tulchinsky hopes that her books will eclipse the restrictive label
of Jewish gay fiction and reach a wider audience.
"Anyone with a gay son, or lesbian daughter, cousin, aunt,
uncle, nephew, niece should check out my books. They may help you
understand more about your family member," she said.
Tulchinsky's next project, in which she is currently engaged, will
likely have a more mainstream appeal. In a departure from her contemporary,
gender-themed comedies, Sticks and Stones is a tale of a
Russian Jewish family and their struggles as new Canadian immigrants
during the Depression and war years. No doubt her avid readers will
be curious to find out how her sharp and colloquial writing carries
over to a more demure, historical story.
"It spans 20 years, beginning in 1933," Tulchinsky explained.
"One of the sons in the family dreams of becoming a professional
boxer and when he grows up, he succeeds in his dream."
The novel is slated for publication in spring 2003 and Tulchinsky
is already booked to read from it at the Vancouver Jewish Community
Centre next year.
Daniel Mate is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.
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