In seven and a half interlinked stories, Aaron Kreuter’s Rubble Children tackles Jewish belonging, settler colonialism, Zionism and anti-Zionism, love requited and unrequited, and cannabis culture, all drenched in suburban wonder and dread. Sometimes realist, sometimes not, the book revolves around Kol B'Seder, a fictional Reform synagogue in the Toronto suburb of Thornhill. In these stories, the locked basement room in the home of the synagogue’s de facto patriarch opens onto a life-altering windfall; visions of an omnipotent third temple terrify; rhythms of the Jewish and scholastic year collide in bong rips and hash hits; alternate versions of Israel/Palestine play out against domestic drama. In the title story, a group of Jewish girls obsessed with the Holocaust discover that they are far from the only people who live in the rubble of history. Engaging, funny, dark, surprising, Rubble Children is a scream of Jewish rage, a smoky exhalation of Jewish joy, a vivid dream of better worlds.
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Related Organizations
- Pages
- 224
- Published in
- Edmonton, CA
- Series
- Robert Kroetsch Series
Table of Contents
- Front cover 1
- Title page 4
- Copyright page 5
- Dedication 6
- Contents 8
- Mourning Rituals 10
- Temples 35
- The Krasners 55
- The Streets of Thornhill 72
- Rubble Children 101
- Holidays, Holy Days, Wholly Dazed 121
- “Tel Aviv–Toronto Red Eye” 193
- A Handful of Days, a Handful of Worlds 199
- Acknowledgements 228
- About the Author 230
