Solomon Gursky Was Here
Oct. 21st, 2002 08:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeSolomon Gursky Was Here
Author: Mordecai Richler (Montreal 1931, Montreal 2001)
First Published By: Penguin Books, 1989
One morning —during the record cold spell of 1851— a big menacing black bird, the likes of which had never been seen before, soared over the crude mill town of Magog, swooping low again and again. Luther Hollis brought down the bird with his Springfield. Then the men saw a team of twelve yapping dogs emerging out of the wind and swirling snows of the frozen Lake Memphremagog. The dogs were pulling a long, heavily laden sled at the stern of which stood Ephraim Gursky, a small fierce hooded man cracking a whip. Ephraim pulled close to the shore and began to trudge up and down, searching the skies, and inhuman call, some sort of sad clacking noise, at once abandoned yet charged with hope, coming from the back of his throat.
It is impossible to convey in other words the intensity of this book. Above is the opening paragraph of the novel, and the pace and ferocity never abates for a moment throughout.
I haven't read much of Richler's work, other than his famous Jacob Two-Two books and a short story here and there. I managed to miss The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, and was rather too young and out of it to want to read Oh Canada! Oh Québec!
Still, Solomon Gursky Was Here has been acclaimed by most critics as the best of Richler's work, and I must agree with them that it is a masterful piece of writing, carefully crafted and intricate, delicate in its attention to detail yet with the power of gale force winds. It was impossible for me not to be swept away by the magnitude of this book.
The story itself is simple enough: Moses Bergman, son of the failed poet L.B. Bergman, has since childhood harboured a perverse fascination for the Gursky family, and in particular the ever-elusive and mysterious Solomon, favoured grandson of Ephraim. He has devoted his life to tracking down Solomon and finding out everything there is to know about the enigmatic figure descended from a line of charlatans, scoundrels and bootleggers. In the process he has ruined his life, become and alcoholic, destroyed any possibility of romantic or familial attachment, yet the desire to know Solomon burns in him more fiercely than any other ever could.
It is this desire that burns in the reader too after a very short while. To the informed reader, the Gurskys are a thinly–veiled version of the Bronfmans, the famous Canadian bootlegging family who made their fortune during Prohibition, but that becomes almost irrelevant as the charismatic Solomon Gursky and his grandfather capture our imagination and take us on one of the wildest journeys ever through the past century and a half.
I suppose the more anal–retentive of my readers will want some kind of scoring chart here. Besides, it'll be kind of fun to make one up. Here goes. I think I'll use stars to rate the books, with ratings of one to five.
Plot: ***** (well-wrought, well thought-out, no gaps, no continuity problems)
Style: **** (some of Richler's best writing, and he actually has veritable flights of genius in some passages, which is rare for him in my experience)
Durability (whether I think it'll stand up to the test of time): *** (it's got a fairly timeless quality about it, although it's rooted in a Montreal of a certain era and a lot of the references to the Bronfmans and the rest of the community may be lost after a while or at least lose their relevance)
Range of Appeal: **** (actually I think that the fact it's a book that deals a lot with Montreal's Jewish community won't interfere at all with the book's appeal to a vcery wide audience; it has something for everyone, it would seem)
Okay, I can't think of any more categories. If anyone wants to add some, let me know. All in all, this is one of the best books I've read in a long time, and I'm letting my review reflect that.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, this has no pretention of being anything else than my personal opinion of the book. No objectivity here at all. ;)
Author: Mordecai Richler (Montreal 1931, Montreal 2001)
First Published By: Penguin Books, 1989
One morning —during the record cold spell of 1851— a big menacing black bird, the likes of which had never been seen before, soared over the crude mill town of Magog, swooping low again and again. Luther Hollis brought down the bird with his Springfield. Then the men saw a team of twelve yapping dogs emerging out of the wind and swirling snows of the frozen Lake Memphremagog. The dogs were pulling a long, heavily laden sled at the stern of which stood Ephraim Gursky, a small fierce hooded man cracking a whip. Ephraim pulled close to the shore and began to trudge up and down, searching the skies, and inhuman call, some sort of sad clacking noise, at once abandoned yet charged with hope, coming from the back of his throat.
It is impossible to convey in other words the intensity of this book. Above is the opening paragraph of the novel, and the pace and ferocity never abates for a moment throughout.
I haven't read much of Richler's work, other than his famous Jacob Two-Two books and a short story here and there. I managed to miss The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, and was rather too young and out of it to want to read Oh Canada! Oh Québec!
Still, Solomon Gursky Was Here has been acclaimed by most critics as the best of Richler's work, and I must agree with them that it is a masterful piece of writing, carefully crafted and intricate, delicate in its attention to detail yet with the power of gale force winds. It was impossible for me not to be swept away by the magnitude of this book.
The story itself is simple enough: Moses Bergman, son of the failed poet L.B. Bergman, has since childhood harboured a perverse fascination for the Gursky family, and in particular the ever-elusive and mysterious Solomon, favoured grandson of Ephraim. He has devoted his life to tracking down Solomon and finding out everything there is to know about the enigmatic figure descended from a line of charlatans, scoundrels and bootleggers. In the process he has ruined his life, become and alcoholic, destroyed any possibility of romantic or familial attachment, yet the desire to know Solomon burns in him more fiercely than any other ever could.
It is this desire that burns in the reader too after a very short while. To the informed reader, the Gurskys are a thinly–veiled version of the Bronfmans, the famous Canadian bootlegging family who made their fortune during Prohibition, but that becomes almost irrelevant as the charismatic Solomon Gursky and his grandfather capture our imagination and take us on one of the wildest journeys ever through the past century and a half.
I suppose the more anal–retentive of my readers will want some kind of scoring chart here. Besides, it'll be kind of fun to make one up. Here goes. I think I'll use stars to rate the books, with ratings of one to five.
Plot: ***** (well-wrought, well thought-out, no gaps, no continuity problems)
Style: **** (some of Richler's best writing, and he actually has veritable flights of genius in some passages, which is rare for him in my experience)
Durability (whether I think it'll stand up to the test of time): *** (it's got a fairly timeless quality about it, although it's rooted in a Montreal of a certain era and a lot of the references to the Bronfmans and the rest of the community may be lost after a while or at least lose their relevance)
Range of Appeal: **** (actually I think that the fact it's a book that deals a lot with Montreal's Jewish community won't interfere at all with the book's appeal to a vcery wide audience; it has something for everyone, it would seem)
Okay, I can't think of any more categories. If anyone wants to add some, let me know. All in all, this is one of the best books I've read in a long time, and I'm letting my review reflect that.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, this has no pretention of being anything else than my personal opinion of the book. No objectivity here at all. ;)
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Categories?
Date: 2002-10-22 02:36 am (UTC)Body Count?
Acronyms for Military Systems per Paragraph (AFMSPP)?
Jingoism?
Oh, wait. Richler, not Clancy.
Never mind...