Be My Wolff

December 5, 2016
Richler’s (Feed My Dear Dogs) ambitious third novel concerns artist Rachel Wolff and her lover, Zachariah—who was raised as Rachel’s adopted younger brother—as they move into their new London home. Zach is estranged from their father Lev, who always doted on Rachel and was hard on Zach, particularly when he abandoned the family’s scholarly and artistic pursuits to become a boxer. After a match that left him with a life-threatening condition, Zach was forced to give up fighting. He still works at a local gym, where he spars on occasion, much to Rachel’s chagrin. Rachel is resurrecting a book she and Zach worked on as children that chronicles the history of a Zach stand-in named Sam. The text of this project makes up a good portion of the narrative, interweaving themes and recurring images. Richler’s writing style is exuberant; the text is rife with so many exclamation points that it takes on the cheerful zest of a friendly work email. There’s a lot going on in this book, but the best parts of the narrative lie in the quiet moments when Rachel and Zach confront their questionable brand of love and the tumultuous effect it has on their lives and loved ones. The novel ends on a sinister note deftly hinted at by the book’s preoccupation with patterns.

November 15, 2016
A self-consciously Dickensian account of an unconventional love from the author of Sister Crazy (2001) and the memoir Feed My Dear Dogs (2005).Rachel Wolff is the daughter of Russian emigres living in London. Zachariah is her lover. He is also her adopted brother, and therein lies the conflict at the center of this novel. It's not that Rachel and Zachariah have a problem with their unusual romance--they do not--but their father does, and Lev's disapproval troubles them both in different ways. Zachariah wants Rachel to choose between the two men. Rachel wants to maintain relationships with both. What could be high melodrama or gut-wrenching realism is, in Richler's hands, a rollicking picaresque-cum-romance. Dickens is directly invoked, and Angela Carter's screwball adventures--Nights at the Circus and Wise Children--come to mind. The difference is that Dickens' novels, wordy as they are, are stuffed with incident. And Carter's plots rattle along at a dizzying speed. Richler's novel is effusive and antic, but it's also quite slow. Rachel and Zachariah are world-class chatterboxes, and the narrator never passes up an opportunity to set a scene in minute detail. "Rachel scrawls an encomium one day on her desk pad alongside a sketch of a pugilist in attitude, an encomium to Zach's career. She uses the Regency style they both enjoy so much and reads it to Zach when he is home." Readers immensely charmed by the preceding will almost certainly enjoy spending a few hundred pages with these characters. Readers who are less delighted should be aware that the whole book is like this, each and every paragraph. This is, among other things, a story about stories--Rachel plunders history, folklore, and fairy tales to create a pedigree for the orphaned Zachariah--so enthusiasm for the richness of the English language makes some thematic sense. But the Victorian slang and the Renaissance swears and the boxing arcana lose a bit of magic with each repetition. Long, slow-moving, and more than a little precious.

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February 1, 2017
Rachel and Zach Wolff live together, to their father's great dismay, in the Camden townhouse they rehabbed. They met as children, when Zach was adopted by Rachel's parents, Russian emigres in London. The not-exactly-siblings bonded quickly, her tender, patient brilliance the perfect foil for his wise physicality and unconscious force. In their youth, they delighted in inventing orphaned Zach's past over and over, foremost as a nineteenth-century Russian foundling working his way into an English boxing ring, and now, as lovers, they delight in the stories still. Rachel, an artist, and Zach, a former pugilist who, after too many blows, must keep himself from fighting, nuzzle, touch, and sniff one another like the animals their name makes of them, and speak in a crackling lingo that's rich in languages, history, fairy tales, memories, and romantic love. The many, centuries-spanning, highly imagined worlds Richler (Sister Crazy, 2001) re-creates here, of the history and ancestry that preceded the young Wolffs, depart from and heighten Rachel and Zach's present-day narrative, and are aided by a glossary and list of historical figures.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2016

Richler's linked-story Sister Crazy, long-listed for the Orange Prize, and her debut novel, Feed My Dear Dogs, not available here, focus on the close but captious Weiss family. Her new novel concerns Rachel Wolff, born to Russian parents in London, and her adopted brother, Zachariah. Their deep bond finally goes beyond that of siblings, and as an adult Rachel recovers from family fallout by inventing a fantastical history. In-house excitement.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2016

Visual artist Rachel Wolff and her adopted brother, welterweight boxer Zachariah, are romantic partners living in London. Rachel's father, Lev, has summoned her to the memorial service for her mother, Katya, in St. Petersburg, but refuses contact with Zachariah, whom he blames for a relationship he considers illicit. Since childhood, Rachel and Zach have spun intricate tales of orphan Zach's origin, drawing upon classic figures and various events in boxing, Russian and British history, folklore, the natural sciences, and literature. These jewel-like bits of fable and fact are interwoven with modern-day conversations and the couple's thoughts as they navigate Zach's suspension owing to a severe concussion in the ring and the growing hostility about their union. This is heavyweight, challenging fare from Canadian/British novelist Richler (Sister Crazy; Feed My Dear Dogs), difficult to categorize and even more difficult to shake off. Charles Dickens, Felix Mendelssohn, Tsar Alexander I, even a 19th-century brown rat make ringside appearances here as the tale of the Wolff family unfolds and reaches back into history in adroit and surprising ways. VERDICT Not for every reader, but skilled literary navigators will appreciate the challenge. [See Prepub Alert, 8/26/16.]--Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.