You Are Not What We Expected by Sidura Ludwig

You Are Not What We Expected by Sidura Ludwig
House of Anansi, May 2020 

Short stories set within a Jewish community in Ontario, and connected through recurring characters.

Marriage and divorce, childhood and old age, death and new babies: these thoughtful stories dip in and out of intergenerational family life with humour and a warm heart. Some of these Jewish family members are religious and some are not. Central figures in several of the stories are Elaine Levine and her cranky brother Isaac, whom she convinces to move back to Canada in order to help her care for her two grandchildren after they were abandoned by their mother. 

In 'The Flag,' Isaac misses the California sun, and thinks back to his time on a kibbutz in 1969:

        His arms were a Sabra brown. His forehead blistered from the heat. When he showered at the end of the day, the water ran brown off his body, as brown as the roads they were paving in Tel Aviv. Brown, he once thought, was the true colour of renewal, the beginning of a seed, the colour of potential. All of Israel was brown then, and he could fade happily into the landscape.
        But now here? In Thornhill, north of Toronto? Isaac sees a lot of white. Even when it isn't winter, he sees clean white pavement, white stucco houses, pale white people translucent in the spring as they emerge from their hibernation. Forget multiculturalism; Canada is the whitest country he has ever known, as if nothing ever changes.

In 'The Elaine Levine Club,' Isaac watches his great-nephew and great-niece, immobile for hours in front of their respective screens.

        Ava, nine, lies on the couch with an iPhone close to her face, watching some sitcom. Isaac thinks about all the wannabe actors in LA coffee shops, the ones chasing careers on the big screen, and how everything boils down to this -- a performance that can fit in the palm of your hand. If entertainment is supposed to be an escape, how can anyone get lost in a dream that small?

Not everyone has small dreams. Escape from the constraints of others' expectations is within reach for several of the characters in these stories. A widow resists her daughter's manipulations. A teenager decides to find his father. A young person refuses to wear a dress to their sister's traditional wedding, and instead wears a black hat and black suit on the men's side of the festivities. The heartbreaking title story is my favourite: a new bride, who has travelled from Australia to live with her husband's family in Thornhill, doesn't live up to their expectations. 

This collection exceeded my expectations. I was caught up in the lives of these people. Clues hint at the continuing sagas from other stories. They reward rereading, a quality I admire.

Giller chances: MEDIUM - I'm not sure if this will catch the eye of the Giller judges, but I do recommend reading it.

This post is part of a series. I'm on the Shadow Giller jury this year, so I'm reading as many qualifying Canadian titles as possible in order to come up with my own longlist prediction before the official one that will be announced on September 8, 2020. To see my other reviews that are a part of this project, click on the Shadow Giller tag. Also, please visit our Shadowing the Best of CanLit website to see what the rest of the Shadow Giller jury are up to. Thanks for visiting my blog.