By JK, on January 12th, 2010 I think I first read Fall on Your Knees (Knopf Canada, 1996) in my third year of university, after I’d picked up the book at a used book sale. I must have recognized the title, since I scooped it without much of a thought, and when I returned home discovered that the copy had been signed. $3 well spent. And when I actually sat down to read the book, the experience mirrored the book’s purchase: I quickly discovered that I was reading something of far more value than I had initially anticipated. I was absorbed, enchanted, utterly devastated. In fact, this is the book that can be attributed with changing negative attitude in regard to all books with a maple leaf stamped on the spine.
This modern gothic saga begins with an inauspicious wedding between young James and Materia, his child bride; a misguided pairing that will result in several children and omipresent misfortune. This tale of familial strife is set against a vast historical and geographic backdrop: in its approximately forty year span, the novel contains both World Wars, the Depression and the Roaring twenties, the Spanish Influenza and Prohibition, depicting these larger historical events alongside the everyday struggles of [...]
By JK, on January 5th, 2009 “You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is on fire.”
This endearing quotation appears prominently on the back of Mister Pip‘s dustjacket, and I thought it a promising beginning. As I read the flap copy and discovered that it was a post-colonial narrative about the magic of literature, I thought I’d found an ideal reading choice for my tastes. Which of course, made it all the more disappointing when Mister Pip failed to conjure up the literary enchantment upon which its premise is founded.
We are introduced to a nameless island somewhere in the south Pacific, where a civil war rages between the rebels and the redskins. The hapless inhabitants a small village just attempt to carry on with their lives. Specifically, the children continue to go to school, where their new teacher, the lone white man on the island, Mr. Watts, uses a radical new teaching method – he simply reads them Great Expectations. Though they stumble over the foreign words and [...]
By JK, on October 16th, 2008 Winner of the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, The 1998 Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Giller prize, I had some pretty high expectations for Barney’s Version – and I am happy to say they were met, if not exceeded. With his trademark acerbic wit, Richler has created an intolerant, cantankerous, curmudgeonly old man that is one of the most enjoyable characters I’ve ever read. Throw in the wicked delight of Richler skewering the arts in Canada, autobiographies, feminists, artists, nationalism, les Quebecois and numerous other things, sporting an amused grimace is pretty much unavoidable.
Following the publication of an old friend’s book in which he is not only ruthlessly skewered, but accused of murder, Barney Panofsky feels a need to clear his not-so-good name. Consequently, he sets out his life story (Barney’s Version), recounting his time among the intelligentsia of Paris in the 1950s (and his first marriage), his return to Montreal and success as a producer of terrible Canadian television (and his second marriage), and lastly, his discovery of his true love, Miriam (and his last marriage.)
But as Barney grows older and struggles to remember the names of the seven dwarfs or the name of a spaghetti strainer, the novel’s [...]
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