My friend didn’t recommend this book, exactly, but she did recommend the author, Javier Marias, or at least said she was impressed with him, and this title is what my neighborhood library had on the shelf, so here we are. Dark Back of Time is a book about writing a book, and the book it’s abo...
Mordecai Richler’s penultimate novel, and certainly his most ambitious, Solomon Gursky Was Here is a yarn spun around the Gursky brothers – Bernard, Morrie, and Solomon – kings of a whiskey empire forged from bootlegging, millionaires many times over, and based on Canada’s Bronfman family. The br...
Joshua Then And Now is a compelling novel penned by Canada’s most intriguing writer. Joshua now is in hospital with broken limbs and a battered visage. Journalists are snooping around his house looking for tips. Joshua is a local writer, a celebrity of sorts, and there is rumour he has done somet...
This is the dirtiest, creepiest, most outrageous, most insane, more provocative novel I’ve read in some time. It’s also the most biting, razor-sharp satire I may have EVER read.Richler takes everything that is cliche about the 1960s and flays it like a freshly-caught salmon. Feminism, capitalism,...
Internationally celebrated as among the finest stories written in English today, Mavis Gallant's fiction offers a penetrating and powerful vision of contemporary human relationships in Europe and North America.The Moslem Wife and Other Stories brings together eleven of Gallant's best stories from...
My 7-year old daughter is quite enamored with the television show based on the Jacob Two-Two series so I decided to borrow the one installment that I found in our local library. As the story got underway she was more interested in the differences in character descriptions and illustration style ...
Things turn sour at Privilege House, Jacob Two-Two’s private school, when the headmaster, Mr. Goodbody, is replaced by the despicable I.M. Greedyguts. Now everything is unbearable, from geography class to the ghastly lunches made by Perfectly Loathsome Leo Louse. Worse yet, nobody’s parents belie...
The following review is littered throughout with spoilers; and so as to err on the side of caution, I've opted to hide the entire thing...(view spoiler)[Browsing through Mordecai Richler's Wikipedia page one evening, the following sentence caught my attention: "Some critics [have] thought Richler...
This was Richler's second novel and one of several pieces of fiction he wrote about the Jewish community around St Urbain Street in Montreal. It is a story of three generations in a Jewish family and the coming of age story of Noah Adler, the idealistic son of Wolf and Leah and grandson of Melech...
The three leads are set in a love triangle which also opposes two sets of morality and the dichotomy of the individual versus the group. Set in 1957, a group of Canadian and American writers and film makers live in exile in London, England. Persecuted and driven from the U.S. by McCarthyism, they...
Goodreads SummaryTransplanted to Toronto from his native Baffin Island, Atuk the poet is an unlikely overnight success. Eagerly adapting to a society steeped in pretension, bigotry, and greed, Atuk soon abandons the literary life in favour of more lucrative – and hazardous – schemes.Richler’s hil...
We are different. While fastidious New York beer drinkers, for instance, will continue to insist on a Molson’s, Labatt’s, or a Moosehead, their modish northern counterparts would much rather be seen nursing a Budweiser or a Miller High Life, now that they are both licensed in Canada. An even more...
They say that a good thing is found only exceptionally, whilst evil things are numerous and lasting. Not only common people make this mistake, but many who believe they are wise. Al-Razi wrote a well-known book On Metaphysics (or Theology). Among other mad and foolish things, it contains also the...
Suddenly, the cell door clanged open and a fat policeman thrust somebody toward him, saying, “Jacob Two-Two, it is my duty to inform you that you and your visitor are, according to the strict letter of the law, allowed one hour together … before facing the judge.” The visitor who had come tumblin...
TANSKY wanted to know, “could he have created the whole lousy world in seven lousy days when even in this modern scientific age it takes longer than that to build one lousy house? Answer me that, big-mouth.” Tansky, a dedicated communist, worked assiduously during elections for the Labour-Progres...
“Hi, Duddy. How’d you make out?” “You lousy liar. Afraid I’d embarrass you, were you?” The other taxi drivers began to file out. Only Walsh stayed. He had three free games coming to him on the pinball machine. “An intimate of the Boy Wonder? Hah! He doesn’t know you from a hole in the ground.” “D...