SOLOMON GURSKY WAS HERE - MORDECAI RICHLER

(1990) FREE POST ANYWHERE IN AUSTRALIA $31

Richler's novels (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, St. Urbain's Horseman) are exuberant, stew-like affairs, and this one is no exception, with especial tang. An alcoholic Montreal writer named Moses Berger is writing a book about the Gursky (read Bronfman) family, founders and owners of the McTavish (read Seagram) Distillers. Actually, the book tries to get a fix on the most shadowy of the original three Gursky brothers - Solomon, who seems to have been both the imp and the hero (buying Jews out of pre-Holocaust Europe) of the family. 

And what a family! Clever, greedy, funny, and in the oddest way very shtetl-like, totally interwoven into the Montreal Jewish community with its muttering provincialism and emotional generosity. Berger traces the family back to the patriarch, Ephraim, a crook thrown out of England and landing in the Arctic, where he assumed a Messianic position among the local Eskimos, who became crypto-Jews. This is funny stuff, but funnier still is the acid portraiture of the social waves that the latter-day Gurskys give off. No one can do a Jewish social function better than Richler, and there's a testimonial dinner here that's priceless - as well as an affectionate but Hogarth-like look at amateur synagogue literary pretensions (such as one wife's book, published after the Gurskys buy into a publishing company, called Hugs, Pain, and Chocolate Chip Cookies). 

REVIEWS:

'A rich, rude, eccentric saga about the Gursky dynasty that crossbreeds Jewish and Canadian myths and is full of splendid comic detail' - Observer

WINNER OF THE 1990 COMMONWEALTH WRITERS PRIZE, SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 1990

Since the age of eleven Moses Berger has been obsessed with the Gursky clan, an insanely wealthy, profoundly seductive family of Jewish-Canadian descent. Now a 52-year-old alcoholic boigrapher, Berger is desperately trying to chronicle the stories of their lives, especially that of the mysterious Solomon Gursky, who may or may not have died in a plane crash.A rich, irreverent and exuberant comic masterpiece from the author of The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and St Urbain's Horseman.

If Richler's cockeyed Canadian historicizing seems somewhat forced at times, less than fully melded-in, the comedy remains constant and effortless. A lot of fun. (Kirkus Reviews)

PUBLISHER: Chatto & Winds, London. Hardcover 240mm x 160mm 415 pages. ISBN: 0701129409. Weight:880g.