THE ZED QUESTIONNAIRE FEATURING RHEA TREGEBOV
AWARD-WINNING POET AND AUTHOR Rhea Tregebov, 65, contemplated leaving fiction behind after taking a decade to complete her first novel, The Knife Sharpener’s Bell, but that plan changed when the 66-year-old heard fellow Canadian novelist Marina Endicott discuss her relationship with her sisters. “I am also one of three sisters, and it was compelling to examine how sisters undermine as well as support each other, how much these sibling relationships can be core to women’s lives,” Tregebov says. “We can measure ourselves against our sisters … but we can also often rely on our sisters to forgive us our worst failings because they know us better than most others in our lives.”
So rather than abandoning fiction, Tregebov penned her latest novel, the 1980s-set Rue des Rosiers, about the youngest of three sisters who, fired from her job, escapes to Paris to jumpstart her life and instead encounters echoes of anti-Semitism and childhood trauma while meeting a young woman living in exile, all in the lead-up to a deadly terrorist attack.
What advice do you wish you had given your 25-year-old self?
It’s okay: if you keep running on that dirt track instead of concrete, your knees will be just fine when you’re in your 60s. Stop worrying already.
What advice would you give your 80-year-old self?
Keep buying your decadesyounger friends dinner, no matter how much they protest. They are indeed honourable people, but now more than ever you need them more than they need you.
What do you know for sure?
The more I know, the more I know how little I know. Vast expanses of ignorance keep opening before me. The latest is the Japanese language. I know that my accent in French will never be what it should be and that my vocabulary in Japanese will forever be limited to toddler-level (yes, thank you, toilet). But people will guess my intentions. And the trouble I will get into will be fun.
What have you learned?
That being loved is not the only thing that gives me a place in the world. The value of what I have to contribute doesn’t depend on how loveable, or likeable, I am.
What will you never learn?
To eat slowly and delicately like a lady.
Best piece of advice?
The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of your pants to the seat of a chair.
Did it work?
Sure did. I like the way that saying blows up the notion of creativity as pure inspiration. Writing can be as everyday (or as extraordinary) as making dinner.
What inspires you?
My mother, who at 93, still lives in her own home, beats me at Scrabble on a regular basis (and tries, but fails, not to gloat), and continues to instruct me on the best TV series to watch as well as the most pressing political issues to fret over.
The moment that changed everything?
Oct. 16, 1985, the day my son was born.
Happiness is …
A long, lovely, cosy, lazy, chatty, sunny Sunday talk with my son who lives at the opposite end of the continent. Unsolicited. (I can dream, can’t I?)