“I could barely write down the stories fast enough; it quickly became clear to me that I had a short fiction collection on my hands,” says Toronto author Aaron Kreuter about his intense, thought-provoking new volume of stories, Rubble Children: Seven and a Half Stories.
- Rubble Children
- Aaron Kreuter
- University of Alberta Press
- $26.99 Paperback, 232 pages
- ISBN: 978-17-72127-72-0
A fiction writer, poet, and academic, Kreuter teaches English at Trent University in Peterborough, Ont. His poetry collection Shifting Baseline Syndrome was shortlisted for the 2022 Governor General’s Award. This is his fifth book.
“The inspirations for this book were a mixture of childhood memories, my interest in diaspora, settler colonialism, Zionism, my frustration with the fractures in the Jewish community, and an almost sociological obsession with cannabis culture as it manifests in Jewish teenagers,” Kreuter says.
The stories take place in Thornhill, north of Toronto, where Kreuter grew up. Some pieces centre on a fictional synagogue ironically named Kol B’Seder (Hebrew for “everything is OK”).
“Temples” involves a teenage youth group at a synagogue sleepover that spirals out of control. “The Streets of Thornhill” deals with what happens when the new program chair at the synagogue invites a Palestinian to speak at its lecture series.
Two of the stories vary from the others in structure. “‘Tel Aviv-Toronto Red Eye’: A Dialogue” is presented as conflict-riddled emails between a Jewish writer and magazine editor regarding a submission.
In “A Handful of Days, a Handful of Worlds,” Kreuter spins a multi-version tale about a lesbian couple’s breakup. In both pieces, he addresses the issue of what a Jewish writer should and shouldn’t write.
Kreuter’s favourite character is Stephanie Krasner, the writer who appears as both teenager and adult, as protagonist and in a secondary role. “The ways Stephanie talks about writing, the ways she takes the world around her and turns it into fiction, parallels in some ways my own thoughts and beliefs about fiction writing,” he says.
As a genre, short fiction appeals to Kreuter. “Creating a short story from what was once a blank page is a challenge, a puzzle, and a delight,” he says. Among his challenges are making sure each story has its own tone, structure, and vision; creating believable situations to explore difficult political and personal issues; and making each sentence the best it can be.
The collection’s target audience is Canadians, Jewish people, Palestinian people, and readers of all stripes and ages. As for Kreuter’s message, he says, “The importance of looking at the world in all its complexity yet remaining committed to an ethical world view is definitely something that each of the stories touch on.”
In Kreuter’s view, the issue of peace is a major factor in this collection. “All of the characters desire peace, but what peace means for each of them is vastly different.”
In terms of the Israel/Palestine conflict, he hopes that the collection, in its small way, helps imagine better futures – a thought echoed in the book’s final acknowledgement: “This book is for all the children who live and who die in the rubble; may we be held accountable, may we build a world without borders, without bombs, without rubble.”
