Customer Reviews

Barney's Version

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is an intelligent, tremendously entertaining read. Mr. Richler assumes the reader is well-read, and this is challenging for some (me). Barney deserves everything he gets in life, except perhaps the final cruelty imposed upon him, as it unfolds in relation to Boogie. Still, I finished this last night, and now find myself missing Barney's perverse dissertations. Damn, Damn, Damn . . . I'm off today to buy "St. Urbain's Horseman"!

I just finished reading the (very good) Italian translation of Barney's Version. It was a long time, since I found a novel written so cleverly and with so strongly, all-round depicted characters (maybe from Bellow's Herzog?). You can't ignore Barney--you must love him, or hate him. No half-measures.

Barney's Version is really an incredible novel. While it reads like the memoirs of a cranky, elderly Jewish Canadian who seems to hate most everything (except his last wife and their three kids), it also serves as an interesting analysis of life in Montreal over the last fifty years for the English-speaking minority, especially the enclave of its (once harassed) Jewish residents.

While the characterizations of Barney and his friends/family are top notch it is Richler's flair for biting satire and sarcastic wit which leaves the most lasting impression of Barney's Version. Joseph (Catch-22) Heller wrote novels with similar style and humour. Yet Richler's Barney has a more worldly, français feel about him compared to Heller's Brooklyn-based characters.

Bottom line: Richler presents a character that is larger than life; it's hard to believe Barney doesn't really exist. Strongly recommended.

I have been reviewing books for 25 years and I must admit that I can count on both hands the number of books I would recommend as "must reads."

But "Barney's Version", by Mordecai Richler, is definitely one of them.As a reader the same age as Barney, I laughed and cried over this wonderful character, and will love him till the day I die.

Barney is a 68 year old Jewish gentleman who has been married three times, widowed once, divorced twice, though still in love with "Miriam, my heart's desire." He had a gay (in the old meaning) youth gallivanting around Europe, then settled in America where he somehow gets charged with and tried for murder. I am a mystery buff, these chapters alone rate those five stars.

This novel is Barney's version of the dastardly deeds he has commited throughout his lifetime, and he will keep you laughing and crying and loving through the pages and through the years.

A bonus in the book is the contribution of Barney's son, Michael, who finds it necessary to footnote the book, correcting Barney here and there, as Barney's memory isn't as good as it used to be. He can never remember such important issues as the last two of the seven dwarfs, the name of that thing you drain spaghetti in, which of the big bands played "In the Mood" and who was that gorgeous brunette in Lil Abner? (You don't remember? Read the book!)

Just recalling the book tempts me to re-read it. I strongly advise you to buy a copy; don't borrow one, for you will never be able to bring yourself to part with it. Enjoy!

Teresa Bloomingdale humur@ix.netcom.com

Barney Panofsky and his cohorts are all artists of sorts--writers, sculptors, painters--Jewish intellectuals at odds with mainstream Montreal life, firmly convinced that they are right, the world is wrong. Boisterous, loud, and resolute in pursuing the pleasures of drugs, alcohol, and women, they live life creatively and on their own terms, taking what they want, where and when they want it. Their cynicism, self-righteousness, and self-absorption epitomize the lives of many young adults during the fifties and sixties, when much of the action of this novel takes place, via flackbacks.

With great panache, Richler loads his complex narrative with pungent satire and wry humor as he shows Barney near the end of his life, reflecting on his three marriages and divorces, his affairs, his career as a producer of second rate films and ads, his drinking, and his trial for the murder of his best friend, some thirty years before. Throughout the novel, Richler teases the reader with tiny pieces of information about the murder, creating suspense at the same time that he tamps it down with humor or neutralizes it by burying it in the mundane details of Barney's life over the span of forty years.

Certainly not a traditional murder mystery, the reader never receives the clues necessary to solve the murder until the last pages of the book. But solving the murder is hardly the point. This is Barney's story--the story of an exasperating and sometimes annoying man almost totally lacking in charm, a man who has spent a good part of his life avoiding responsibility. Now in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, Barney is an unreliable narrator, trying valiantly to set down his version of what happened to Boogie Moscovich. Only the most hard-hearted reader will fail to develop sympathy for Barney by the end of the novel, but I found it difficult to like him and his friends very much. As a result, I found this a hard read, despite my admiration for the author and delight in much of his humor. Mary Whipple

Richler is in top form here. This, next to Solomon Gursky was Here is his best novel to date, and certainly his most relevant. He pokes and prods every group out there, jews, women, quebecois, candians, N. Americans, video store workers....everyone! Mordecai has immense fun with the world of the politically correct, and the petit Canadian Intellectual. It is a great end to a brilliant career and showed that Richler never lost it. All of his novels are about himself and his world, that's obvious, but what is great about it is that his is never pointlessly condescending, or overtly egotistical. This great writer displays the same dissatisfactions with the world that we all have. Obviously being a great writer doesn't make you feel any better about life (T.S. Elliot and Celine, amongst others, have said as much), it just helps you to articulate those dissatisfactions a little better. Most importantly this book is a riot. Certainly understanding candian history and culture is a help but no, it is not necessary. Incidentally the cigar on the cover isn't what Barney smokes, that is what Richler smoked.

I really enjoyed this book. It is well written,
the characters are great, and I found myself
laughing out loud while reading it. It is the
best book I have read this year. The ending
is one of the best yet!

Many times authors don't bother to develop characters (see: Danielle Steele), or if they do, then the characters are overwrought with detail and too large (see: Ayn Rand).

In this case, the author makes the central character Barney just large enough to be believable and realistically vulgar enough to be human. There was also a lot of attention paid to details that made you believe that he was writing a biography. Examples:

1. His mother had what may have been Alzheimer's disease, which is known to have a genetic component. The main character shares the same fate at the end of the book. There are (to my recollection) no direct scenes with the characters' mother, and she could have been eliminated with no damage to the book. But she may have been there just to establish that link.

2. The pace at which the character starts to forget things increases throughout the book, foreshadowing his collapse into Alzheimer's at the end.

3. The accurate/ humorous portrayal of what really became of a lot of the black militants, portrayed through the character of Cedric. And his observations of the belligerence of the feminists.

4. The use of the epilogue (Barney's son), and real historical references, such as newspaper clippings to provide an air of believability to the novel.

A wonderful romp through the fading memoirs of a mensch in renaissance man's clothing. Offering the local color of a Garrison Keillor coupled with the wry wit and humanism of Kurt Vonegut, Richler's quasi autobiographical novel entertains and enriches. While you don't have to be a montreal jew to appreciate his writing - it sure doesn't hurt!

Barney Panofsky is a bittersweet, sad and funny man who tells his life story his way. Richler has rarely written about black and white, pure wool heroes, and Barney is as complex as any character he has previously described. For all of his misanthropy and failures, though, Barney has enough humanity that one can see bits of Everyman (and oneself?) at times. He loves his children, he loves one woman (though he fails her) and he can be generous with his money, friendship and time. So I was a little jealous that I did not enjoy the bohemian days in Paris that Barney had. I was envious of the purity of his love for his last wife. I laughed at his malicious pranks and cringed at their viciousness. In sum, Barney's Version may not be all true but within it were some truths I recognized.

One additional positive note and one concern. The role of memory in how one sees oneself, and the mixture of selective memory and failing memory are brilliantly explored. My concern rests with the geopolitical references. The nostalgic mentions of places and shops long gone (due to nationalist posturing and bullying, according to Mr. Richler) and the intermittent polemics against the Catholic, French anti-Semites seem like so much of an in-joke. Does anyone unfamiliar with Montreal, its Jewish community and the current political situation find these issues intrusive?