Emma's version

>> Another writing Richler weighs in with Sister Crazy

by JULIET WATERS

"This is not my natural habitat," says Emma Richler about the media tour for her first novel, Sister Crazy. "I feel a bit like an animal in the wrong zoo."

Of all the wrong zoos--she has sold the rights in the U.S., U.K. and Denmark--Canada seems to be the worst. It's hard to tell if the extremely shy, soft-spoken daughter of Mordecai Richler is being disingenuous, or is almost impenetrably naive about the intense scrutiny she's been receiving from Canadian journalists. "I don't really understand why there seems to be so much interest in how autobiographical my novel is."

To be fair, this Richler hasn't spent much time in Canada, living most of her life in London. Drop Jacques Parizeau into a conversation with the daughter of the founder of the Priz Parizeau and her reaction is: "Who?" She's aware her older brothers Daniel and Noah, and younger brother Jacob, seem like something of a media cabal. But living in London, the Richler notoriety, she claims, has never been much of a factor in her life.

But here's why we're curious. Sister Crazy is a confessional framed as a therapy session. Jem is the middle child of five children in a family that moves from England to Canada. Their father is a writer (a sports columnist and writer of children's books); he has wild hair and a deeply furrowed brow. He is a moody, self-absorbed, emotionally distant, scotch drinker, a good financial provider but barely able to take care of himself. "It is possible this man had children in order to operate machinery for him. Yes, I think so," muses Jem.

His attempts at paternal nurturing only intensify the impression of Weiss as an emotionally challenged. "My Dad walks with me. He is gripping my neck, loosely he thinks, in a manner suggesting fellowship and affection. It feels good although his grip is a little like those sinks in the hair salon, designed to hold your head in place but actually inviting disaster, such as permanent spinal injury and wholesale numbing of the nervous system. But I like walking with my dad this way. The world is ours. No one would dare pull a gun on us, nor even call out a careless remark. Everyone wants to be us, I can tell."

It's a rather sad tale of a girl so in love with an almost pathologically lovely mother, and with her brothers, especially the second son, Jude, that Jem has no friends, let alone lovers. She becomes so self destructive she can't be in the same room as a knife. By the end of Sister Crazy, few could want to be one of the Weiss family, no matter how much they seem like the bon vivant Richlers.

"Oh...I see," says Richler, feigning a light bulb moment, and shifting gear from wary to coy. "It's gossip... well in that case: yes, I'm in love with my brother. I'm in love with all my brothers. I'm passionately in love with everyone in my family."

Efforts at trying to lead Richler into a deeper discussion of her well written but often frustrating pastiche of a novel are futile. Sister Crazy, she argues, speaks for itself: it is simply "a family romance" and is probably best understood in the context of that genre, rather than the context of the Richlers.

Easier said than done for the average reader, and certainly the average journalist. The Richler family romance is the closest thing we have to a Can-lit King Lear. And now a new writing Richler. Is Emma Cordelia or Fool? Truth teller or sly insinuator? In some versions of Lear, one actor plays both parts. Is this what's happening in Emma's version?

Richler, however, dismisses the notion that her father has ever encouraged any of them to write. "I think all he ever wanted was one of us to make enough money to take care of him," she laughs affectionately

Sister Crazy by Emma Richler, Knopf, hc., 215 pp.,$29.95