Publication
Arrow Random House Group (1991), 510 pages
Original publication date
1989
Collections
Genres
Awards
Booker Prize (Longlist — 1990)
Governor General's Literary Award (Finalist — 2015)
Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Winner — 1990)
Quebec Writers' Federation Award (Winner — 2016)
Description
Berger, son of the failed poet L.B. Berger, is in the grips of an obsession. The Gursky family with its colourful bootlegging history, its bizarre connections with the North and the Inuit, and its wildly eccentric relations, both fascinates and infuriates him. His quest to unravel their story leads to the enigmatic Ephraim Gursky: document forger in Victorian England, sole survivor of the ill-fated Franklin expedition and charasmatic religious leader of the Arctic. Of Ephraim's three grandsons, Bernard has fought, wheeled and cheated his way to the head of a liquor empire. His brother Morrie has reluctantly followed along. But how does Ephraim's protege, Solomon, fit in? Elusive, mysterious and powerful, Solomon Gursky hovers in the background, always out of Moses' grasp, but present-like an omen.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member anabellebf
Amazing book. I laughed from begining to end. Richler is kind of a taboo reading for a French-Canadian, but he doesn't only laugh at F-Cs... he laughs about everyone and everything, ESPECIALLY Jews. My teacher ended up taking this book out of his syllabus but I read it nonetheless, thinking it was
A must-read.
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a shame to give up on it.A must-read.
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LibraryThing member charlie68
A hard to catergorize book. Rangey, travels in time, from character to character, leaving the reader the job of keeping everything straight. Perhaps not a book to read in the car, with a lot of other distractions. Some good writing, some bad, some writing that is R-rated, perhaps typical for
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Richler, but nothing that I would say people will be reading 100 years from now. Show Less
LibraryThing member Niecierpek
This was my second reading of the book, and twenty years later I found it still an intelligent and hilarious, if a bit biting, romp through Canadian Jewish history.
LibraryThing member Melissande
Not so great as Barney! But pleasant
LibraryThing member stephengoldenberg
An entertaining if overlong read. It's a truly picaresque novel constantly moving about in time and place. Very funny in parts but it's shapelessness can be annoying.
LibraryThing member bodachliath
This is an ambitious, confusing and sometimes crazy mixture of fact and fantasy. It tells the story of an ultimately rich Jewish Canadian family from the early nineteenth century to the 1980s. The story is loosely held together by Moses Berger, an alcoholic writer obsessed with the family who has
At the heart of the story are the legends of the family's founding father Ephraim, a small-time criminal in London who somehow inveigles himself a place on Franklin's ill-fated expedition to find the North-West passage. In Richler's version of the story, Ephraim is the only survivor, first through cannibalism and then by persuading the local Inuit to follow his religious cult.
Ephraim's three grandsons are Bernard, Solomon and Morrie, who we first meet in a remote hotel in rural Saskatchewan where their father is a horse trader. Solomon bets their entire future in a poker game and wins the hotel, and the money that enables them to start a business, initially as bootleggers but eventually as a respectable business, which is run by the controlling patriarch Bernard after the charismatic Solomon disappears in a mysterious plane crash.
These are just two of the many strands of a tale that encompasses many disparate elements, and allows Richler to indulge his interests in history, Inuit customs, Judaism and much else besides.
The book is deliberately muddled, partly to reflect Moses's addled mind, and partly to allow some surprising revelations to be held back until quite late. For me it is too long, and I did feel that the female characters' roles were very limited, but the best parts are very good indeed.
I read it as part of Goodreads' The Mookse and the Gripes group's project to analyse the 1990 Booker prize shortlist. 1990 was another very strong year, and I can't place this one any higher that fifth, but in other years it might have been a strong contender, and I would be interested in reading more Richler.
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accumulated scraps of information over a lifetime. At the heart of the story are the legends of the family's founding father Ephraim, a small-time criminal in London who somehow inveigles himself a place on Franklin's ill-fated expedition to find the North-West passage. In Richler's version of the story, Ephraim is the only survivor, first through cannibalism and then by persuading the local Inuit to follow his religious cult.
Ephraim's three grandsons are Bernard, Solomon and Morrie, who we first meet in a remote hotel in rural Saskatchewan where their father is a horse trader. Solomon bets their entire future in a poker game and wins the hotel, and the money that enables them to start a business, initially as bootleggers but eventually as a respectable business, which is run by the controlling patriarch Bernard after the charismatic Solomon disappears in a mysterious plane crash.
These are just two of the many strands of a tale that encompasses many disparate elements, and allows Richler to indulge his interests in history, Inuit customs, Judaism and much else besides.
The book is deliberately muddled, partly to reflect Moses's addled mind, and partly to allow some surprising revelations to be held back until quite late. For me it is too long, and I did feel that the female characters' roles were very limited, but the best parts are very good indeed.
I read it as part of Goodreads' The Mookse and the Gripes group's project to analyse the 1990 Booker prize shortlist. 1990 was another very strong year, and I can't place this one any higher that fifth, but in other years it might have been a strong contender, and I would be interested in reading more Richler.
Show Less
LibraryThing member wbell539
OK, I admit it. It had considerable difficulty following the story lines in this one. Not that it needs saying, Richler is smarter than me. Nonetheless, there were a lot of smiles and out-and-out laughs.
Language
Original language
English
ISBN
0099877309 / 9780099877301
Physical description
510 p.; 7.8 inches
Pages
510