I thought this was brilliant plotting and character, a brave distopia, and the ending hit me a day or two later, when I 'got' it. I was so pleased I had to pull the car over to think about it. Prototypically 'northern,' comprehensively Canuck, the book hovers on the border between country life and metropolis mayhem. Helps that I've been longing for Montreal since I left school there in 1985, so through nostalgic glasses.
One more thing: since reading the book I have this zany image of the author, in the guise of his character (a reader no-no, I know) bidding the world adieu with a click of air-heels as he tap dances his witty way out of our lives... I once endured his glare over his reading glasses, as he signed my book, after I'd made a moronic 'goy' joke about a film he was making of his books. ( )

One of my favourist book! It's beautiful!

My favorite Mordecei book. Barney reminds me of aJewish/Canadian Henry Miller. ( )

Fantastically written, with an ending that left me breathless and shocked. ( )

This quote, from Javier Marias (Tomorrow In The Battle Think On Me) sums up nicely the direction of Richler's story:

"...each of us understands things as we choose to, we tell our own stories, no two stories are the same even if they recount a common experience. And besides, they don't belong only to those who were present or to those who invent them, once a story has been told, it's anyone's, it becomes common currency, it gets twisted and distorted, and we all tell our own version."

This is the story about Barney's version, i.e., his version of his life, recognizing that others saw it differently, reacted differently to the same incidents, or to Barney himself, and would have their own versions, often not too flattering.

I don't think I would have liked Barney Parnofsky if I met him at a party, unless of course I could get inside his head, which is impossible, and is the overall point of the novel: as is said at the very end, "Life is absurd and no one really knows another person". Hence, we have Barney's version of his own life, but this differs considerably from the versions that others could write: friends, enemies, lovers, parents, children, acquaintances, colleagues, etc, etc. And this true for each and every one of us. Richler is clever in giving us hints of those different versions through the actions of Barney's friends, lovers, wives, and children without ever actually spelling them out. And even Barney's version is not necessarily accurate, given the tricks of memory, not to mention the most highly developed faculty in all human beings: rationalization. Did he really shoot Boogie? I'm not sure.

I wondered a couple of things as I read the book: would women react differently to Barney, given his very male-centric view of life and love (I see a very insecure man who never really feels that he has "made it" despite his money and all the physical indications of success, partly because he not sure in his own mind what it is that he seeks, but this is because we get inside his head: maybe this does not excuse his completely irascible temperament); and would a non-Canadian lose something from the book not knowing the details of separatist activities and other Canadian, not to say Quebec-focused issues and comments? But I did get swept-up in Barney: he never bored me and sometimes he made me laugh out loud.

The idea of never really knowing another person is a sobering one, and one worth reflection. Skimming through my Commonplace Book, I find similar thoughts from other authors:

Andre Maurois (in Marshal Lyautey): The most painful human tragedies are rarely visible on the surface, and about nearly all human beings we are mistaken.

Graham Swift (in Last Orders): You see all the dead, all the bent and broken or plain stretched-out dead, and you think, These people are strangers now, total strangers. But it's the living who are strangers, it's the living whose shapes you can't every guess.

And in the end, is there a Truth? Probably not. Ortega y Gasset said that, "To create a concept is to leave reality behind" (a thought brilliantly explored in a book called A Heart So White by Javier Marias, which I recommend), and in the end, to quote Anne Michaels (pardon all this name-dropping): "When a man dies, his secrets bond like crystals, like frost on a window. His last breath obscures the glass" (brilliant image; you can see how she first made her name as a poet).