December Book Reviews

Barney's Version

By Mordecai Richler

Reviewed by Elodie Adams

It is often said that the book is better than the movie.

This year's Toronto International Film Festival featured several film adaptations of novels. Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, Kazuo Ishigiro's Never Let Me Go, and Barney's Version  by Mordecai Richler are three of those titles.

When a novel makes it to the big screen, it usually incites my curiosity to read it...same for the rest of Victoria, it would seem.

On the GVPL website, all three titles were already maxed-out on holds. I manage to get my name down with only a two-week wait for Richler's book. In the meantime I read a different Greene novel.

Picking up and reading the book by Richler was like walking into a seedy bar whose foul-mouthed patrons make you want to turn and walk out again. Its central character, Barney Panofsky, is an aging, insecure, cynical, and vulgar producer of mediocre television shows and movies whose life has become focused on two obsessions: his undying love for his ex-wife Miriam, and his equally passionate contempt for one of his peers.

A carefully constructed, exquisitely detailed character study delivered in the first person, this novel has a lot going for it. Once  adjusted to the acerbic style of the author's wit, I found myself caught in the clutches of his story, even though it was confusing at times and I had to keep referring back to sections of the story to pick up a thread.

Many of the misfortunes that befall Barney have been self-inflicted and he knows it. The book is decidedly funny, and shows the author's fine eye for life's tragic side. The way it ends will jolt you back to earth in short order. Some critics call it a modern classic. I'm actually looking forward to seeing the movie.

Let the Great World Spin

By Colum McCann

Reviewed by Anne Draper

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann (349 pages of modern prose) by Irish born Colum McCann pits the human mind against our technical world. It's full of real people who care about what happens to one another in their daily lives. New York City, with its many divisions, its many boroughs, and its black and white population is the setting. It begins with a true historic event on August 7, 1974, when a figure walks a tightrope between the two World Trade Center towers, which were once 110 stories high. The event attracts crowds of astonished spectators. Crowds watch a figure who "believed in walking beautifully and elegantly," and that "walking was a divine delight." Each character is developed in each of the thirteen short stories and four book divisions and are spun together at an unrelenting pace. Manhattan with its many boroughs becomes the setting for two Irish brothers living two different lifestyles, a group of newly organized grieving mothers, and a mother and daughter caught up in prostitution, street violence and death. All this is told with passionate dialogue and fast-paced action. "Words are good for saying what things are, but sometimes they don't function for what things aren't" and "the cynicism of giving all the truth but none of the honesty by persons we know at first and are surprised and puzzled by the person we come to know at last." In this fast-paced novel of black and white real people, "There is a fear of love," by the characters thrown together in the melting pot culture of America. This is an unrelenting power struggle between human beings told with compassion and courage by the author who lives and works in New York City.