My own grandparents had emigrated from eastern Europe around 1903, my paternal grandmother arriving in Montreal in circumstances very similar to the ones I had created for Lily. Why had the man she was supposed to marry rejected her on sight? Why had she stolen someone else’s identity? Exploring the questions Lily raised for me proved to be the most challenging, difficult and ultimately satisfying process that I’ve experienced as a writer.Īt first I set the time period of Lily’s arrival in Montreal in the early 20th century. Who was this woman? Why were she and her new husband sitting in silence? Where had she had come from? What had brought her to Montreal? As I wrote further, details emerged, only to raise more questions. The Imposter Bride, like all my writing, started with a sentence that came into my head, seemingly out of nowhere: “In a small room off a banquet hall in Montreal Lily Kramer sat in silence with her new husband.” On one level it was a simple sentence, but as I wrote it layers of questions began building within me. Given that Nancy and that other Richler novelist, Mordecai, were second cousins-their grandfathers were brothers-the question arises of how close CanLit’s gene pool came to serious disruption: if the rejecting Richler had accepted his immigrant bride, would both writers have disappeared, turned into historical might-have-beens? (As it turns out, no Mordecai’s grandfather was yet another Richler brother.) Here is Nancy Richler on the inspiration for her new novel, followed by an excerpt.

Her paternal grandmother also came to Montreal for an arranged marriage, and-like Richler’s imposter bride, Lily-was rejected by her intended, only to be accepted by one of his brothers. “There’s so much tension in this city-so diverse, with everybody rubbing up against each other-and I think that makes for a dynamic writing scene.” Richler’s novel The Imposter Bride, about a woman who arrives in Canada from Poland under a false name for an arranged marriage, is in part a tale of Jewish Montreal, and of Richler’s own family. That makes her one of three Montreal women shortlisted for the Giller prize. Nancy Richler, 55, left her native Montreal for the West Coast in 1975 and returned to a very different city in 2011. THE 2012 SCOTIABANK GILLER PRIZE: Canada’s most distinguished literary prize awards $50,000 annually to the best Canadian novel or short-story collection published in English

The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler