Customer Reviews

Cocksure

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4 star:		(2)
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Although written more than thirty years ago Cocksure is still a startlingly fresh look at morality and the media; too bad it's no longer in print (..however at least here in Britain it isn't hard to find a copy at secondhand bookshops). Without exercising any form of restraint, Richler paints a modern world where prudes are ostracized and sexual liberation has gone wild. The book is quite rude, and so the easily offended should pass it by (..I think the title of the book is a fair warning of its contents).

The story is about a hapless middle-aged media man in London coping with a cheating wife, friends who falsely accuse him as being Jewish ("Jewish-ness", anti-semitism, and paranoia over anti-semitism are common themes in Richler novels), worries over his under-sized member, and a workplace overrun by very strange people. Society is morally corrupt (his kid's advant-garde school is really bizarre), and our poor chump always seems to come out on the losing end. It's a very funny read. However the story seems to move side-ways; nothing really exciting happens. Fortunately Richler's sarcastic wit has never been in better form.

Bottom line: a very rude and funny read. Worth a look.

COCKSURE is the wittiest, most amusing Richler book I have read so far. In COCKSURE Richler satirizes political correctness and reverse discrimination. In the world of the book, schoolchildren perform Christmas plays by the Marquis de Sade, and political correctness in general runs amuck. The protagonist is an open-minded Canadian Anglo-Saxon male who none-the-less feels that something is wrong when children perform works by de Sade and teachers freely perform oral sex on school children. Everyone should read this Governor-General's Award-winning book that shows the dangers of taking political correctness too far.

This is a hilarious book. Those who love satire should find this one somehow. Some of the passages are an absolute laugh riot. Only a Jewish writer could write such funny things about Jewish people. Gentiles will laugh too! If you like Vonnegut, you must source this one somehow.

This book shows us liberalism gone too far, in an outlandish, implausible future which may not be as far from our reality as we think....