In this vein, it is successful, leaving the reader hanging until near the end. The Imposter Bride is in many ways a mystery novel the question of who Ruth’s mother actually is propels the narrative as pieces of her story are slowly revealed. Ultimately, Richler implies, the forces of history are to blame for the suffering of her characters rather than any of their own moral failings.
There is a nagging simplicity to how this is resolved. Article contentĪs Ruth learns more about her mother’s wartime experiences that took her from Poland to Palestine to Montreal, she gradually comes to terms with the pain of being abandoned. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The other begins in Ruth’s childhood and continues until she has a family of her own, tracing her experience of growing up without a mother - an absence “like a hole in the centre of a bagel.” One travels back in time, as Ruth imagines her mother’s fateful arrival in postwar Montreal and brief arranged marriage to her father, Nathan Kramer. Ruth tells the story of this enigmatic figure and her quest to find her, switching between two parallel narratives. The “imposter bride” of the title refers to Ruth’s mother, whose haunted past leads her to abandon her husband and infant daughter. One reason for this is that it is seen through the eyes of Ruth Kramer, Richler’s protagonist, who, instead of using words like “shit,” says “dog’s mess” she’s a character too intrinsically earnest to possess anything beyond a one-dimensional vision of the immediate world around her. Similar to the Chagallian whimsy of the Belarusian shtetl in her previous novel, Your Mouth is Lovely, Montreal in The Imposter Bride is written with an affected nostalgia that leaves the reader with more of a sentimental idea than a complex, breathing landscape. Nancy Richler’s, by comparison, is understated, lacking in distinctive detail, as she weaves her narrative between the cold-water flats of the ’40s and the tree-lined streets of middle-class N.D.G. Mordecai’s style is unhinged and atmospheric, his Montreal brought to life in a sort of brash colloquial symphony.
The two writers - their grandfathers were brothers - differ vastly.
Nancy Richler’s latest novel, The Imposter Bride, opens in postwar Jewish Montreal, a place that has been well-documented by another Richler: Mordecai.
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