The Crime Lady: In Celebration, In Memory
Dear TCL Readers:
Last week brought a bounty of good news in these parts. Unspeakable Acts rolled out with far more fanfare that I was expecting, including a rave review by Gabino Iglesias for NPR.org, deeming the collection “one of the best true crime books of the year”; a starred review in Shelf Awareness for Readers; a Q&A by Hazel Cills for Jezebel that was a real pleasure and got the gist of what the anthology was trying to do: and this mention in the current issue of People:
Both launch events, Books Are Magic in conversation with Casey Cep, and a panel of contributors hosted by Politics & Prose, also went spectacularly well. The latter event was some kind of dream panel, and I could have talked with Pamela Colloff, Emma Copley Eisenberg, Sarah Marshall, and Rachel Monroe for hours. To be in the company of so many intelligent, thoughtful writers and journalist is not to be taken for granted, and I never will.
There are also signed copies at Books Are Magic, and bookplates are on the way to Politics & Prose as well:
Unspeakable Acts has also gone into a second printing. And there’s more good news I can’t quite share yet. But the week, despite the anthology-fueled positivity, was bittersweet.
On the morning of the book’s publication, I learned that my uncle, Julian AvRutick, died the night before. He was 85. As the obituary by his daughter, the writer and editor Sharon AvRutick, conveys, Julian led an outsized, expansive life befitting a man of such strong personality and convictions who spent a good portion of his career in the advertising business (responsible, in part, for BMW’s iconic “The ultimate driving machine” campaign of the mid-1970s:)
He adored his family, above else, be they Alice, his wife of 63 years, his children, his grandchildren, and extended family. He also had a deeply complicated, sometimes fraught, relationship with my mother, younger than he by seven years.
It was still so evident to me how much Julian and my mother loved one another, especially at times of crises — ill and dying parents, theirs and later, mine — and simchas. But they could never dislodge childhood conflicts, acting out the same paradigms decades into adulthood. Their relationship, and that between my late father and his own seven-years-younger sibling (one marked by distance and, at times, indifference), were models in the kind of sibling relationships I did not wish to have. My brother and I have been close since my birth, and it’s taken work, but I’m glad for the relationship we have as adult siblings, quite different than our closeness when very young.
My own relationship with my uncle was predicated on work talk. He wasn’t one for big expressions of feeling but he would email whenever there was a good review of books I wrote or edited in major newspapers, and made clear how much he respected what I did. (One email, sent at the end of 2018: “Like most that know you, it makes us proud.”) It meant a lot. But it meant far more that he knew I had a good relationship with his children and grandchildren.
The longest and most amusing back-and-forth Julian and I had was in November 2016, after I’d written a short obituary for Leonard Cohen, three months older than my uncle and a fellow Montrealer. “You might get a kick to I know I met Leonard three times,” he began. All of those meetings were during their high school years — Julian attended Baron Byng High School (as did my late father, a couple of years younger) while Cohen, raised in a more affluent Jewish home, went to Strathcona Academy. “More specifically, the three times centered around a girl named Sybil.”
Sybil, whose last name my uncle never revealed, was a girl he was interested in going out with. She was diabetic, which in the early 1950s meant she had to carry a loaded hypodermic needle everywhere she went, as it was the only way to inject insulin. For one date, he agreed to pick her up in a little park located near Strathcona. “She and L. were in a deep discussion when I got there. So we were introduced.”
The second time Julian met Leonard was at a high school basketball game at the Strathcona Academy gym. Julian was playing. Leonard was sitting with Sybil in the stands. “For some reason, don't know why, I had a particularly good game that day.” The third and final time, Julian and Sybil were at a party when they encountered Cohen: “We said the usual, superficial,words to each other. (His, I'm certain, were more poetic than mine.)” And as Julian revealed, “I think I beat him out for Sybil as she and I 'went together' all that last year of high school.” They went to different colleges — she to McGill, he to Sir George Williams College, later Concordia — and the relationship broke off. A few years later, he would meet his wife at an Adirondack summer camp.
My uncle and Leonard Cohen never met again in person. Julian kept tabs to some degree of Cohen’s rise in prominence, but there were limits because, he admitted, “I never was a fan of poetry — no patience — and didn't care for his music.”
**
READ/WATCH/LISTEN
August is ridiculously plentiful in good books, particularly nonfiction, what with Morgan Jerkins’ Wandering in Strange Lands; My Life As a Villainess by Laura Lippman; Belabored by Lyz Lenz; The Unreality of Memory by Elisa Gabbert; Sprawl by Jason Diamond; After the Last Border by Jessica Goudeau; Being Lolita by Alisson Wood; Caste by Isabel Wilkerson; and The Devil’s Harvest by Jessica Garrison. Jessica and I will be doing a virtual event together in mid-September, and more details on that closer to the date.
The podcast I am currently obsessed with is Once Upon a Time in the Valley, hosted by Lili Anolik (with lots of help by Ashley West, co-proprietor of The Rialto Report.) It’s about Traci Lords and the 1980s adult film industry, but it’s really about the complexity of storytelling, and that one person’s perspective may be correct for them, but is only partially right in the context of the larger whole.
The television show I am currently obsessed with is one that many are also obsessed with: I May Destroy You, written and produced by and starring Michaela Coel. To see this level of nuance and messiness with respect to trauma and pain and friendships is breathtaking. Also the cinematography is utterly beautiful, I keep being drawn to flashes of color here and expressions there. It feels like the last great show of the Before Time, airing now, when we need it most.
That’s it for another week around these parts. Take care during these August dog days, and see you next week.
Until then, I remain,
The Crime Lady