Sister Crazy
Description
$29.95
ISBN 0-676-97385-X
DDC C813'.6
Author
Publisher
Year
Review
Printed under the title of Sister Crazy, Emma Richler’s debut novel is
“fiction,” lest we confuse the book’s Ben, Jude, Jemima, Harriet,
and Gus with the real-life Daniel, Noah, Emma, Martha, and Jacob
Richler. Certainly there seems to be much of Emma’s life that informs
the book, which caroms among the vicissitudes of childhood, opening when
the narrator, Jemima Weiss, is nine, and moving back and forth between
ages eight and about 16.
For a slim book about a family of seven, Sister Crazy packs a great
deal of information about each character and about the web of love and
camaraderie that binds them together. Dad is the centre of their solar
system, lurching and laughing and playing pranks, handsomely disheveled
even in black tie. Mom, the children are convinced, is an angel, pretty
and calm and preternaturally aware of her offspring. Harriet, “my
little sister with a big thing for dancing but not laughter,” we read,
“can hold off chaos all on her own, just by showing how much it freaks
her out, like that is enough. It is enough for me.” Jude, nearest in
age to Jemima, has a special bond and can wound her as easily as he
comforts her, although as with most children he is not aware of these
powers. The bookend children, Ben and Gus, are slightly less distinct,
but we learn enough to make sense of the roles they play in the family.
Jemima reminisces about her childhood from a vague and troubled present
day, and it is this tension between past and present that draws the
story taut. The shared jokes, movies, meals, knowledge and history of
the Weiss children act as a bulwark against trouble in later times.
Whether fictional, real, or something in between, Jemima’s family
remains a source of strength she can continue to draw on, and the
portrait drawn by Richler makes for a startlingly clear novel.