Krishna
This was shortlisted for the Booker prize. The story is certainly a different one from the regular movies.
Luther Hollis shoots down a big bird in Magog with his trusty Springfield rifle. Eprahim Gursky come in on a sled. He calls people to reform and become religious.
Great, then the book abruptly shifts to the Jewish community in Canada (Montreal) and wanders around. LB, an under appreciated writer, supported loyally by wife, gets fame and lets it go to his head. Moses is his son. First it is confusing but you tend to put all the pieces together eventually and the book gets more interesting.
LB “sells his soul” for money by agreeing to write speeches for the rich man who gives him a yearly retainer.
The book goes back to Solomon Gursky. The confusing bits are because of these wild lurches in timeframe. Solomon’s father is the priest Eprahim, who now is a drunken vagabond, dragging his son into the wastes of Arctic, teaching him to build igloos, tend to the sled dogs, and alternately being affectionate and crabby.
Now Moses, yet another new character, is trying to establish that there were Jews in the doomed expedition to the Arctic by a group of Irish and English explorers.
There is a boring episode of Moses getting a new girlfriend and a cabin up in the woods. He meets up with a layabout called Strawberry. Goes drinking constantly.
The story simply rambles on, with apparently no aim, lurching into a plan to bring anarchy in Canada and other prejudices of various characters.
Lionel, the brother of Henry, one of the Gurskys, tries to buy his (Henry’s) share of the company for himself. Henry caught religion and ran away to the Arctic to be with the Eskimos and even married an Eskimo girl called Nialie. He has a son, Isaac.
There is Bernard who has a phobia about almost everything and is in control of the corporation as well, much to Lionel’s discomfort.
More stuff about LB Gursky, who is the father of Eprahim (I think) and dying and never got published. He is jealous of another man who got his first piece accepted by the New York Times.
More guff about Eprahim making his money through moonshine and marrying ladies and abandoning them all over the world.
Solomon comes and goes, as a vagabond, heir to the fortune, God knows what else.
There is the daughter Lucy who wants to be an actress but is fooled into parting with her money on false pretexts. She keeps Moses who is a drunk at her house for a while till he leaves.
We learn that Eprahim was predicting the end of the world among villagers and fled when his third prediction failed to come true, letting some of his assistant priests be lynched by the angry mob.
We learn that he worked as a cleaner at the coal mines and befriended Mr Nicholson, who turns out to be gay and seduces his rigid over-religious wife. (What? At this point you are like ‘whatever dude’.)
Then there is Barney who is so protective of his young wife Darlene that she feels suffocated.
Solomon seems to have founded the Gursky empire by a gambling win.
He seems to be oblivious of laws or the impact of breaking them while his brother Barney sweats through the whole thing.
The book has interesting vignettes about everyone but it somehow does not hold it all together. I got the feeling of reading about disparate strands of stories about various characters but somehow they did not seem to gel together into one story.
For instance Sir Hymin is a rascal who feeds his guests matza balls filled with blood and lies about his sexual prowess to bed women.
A tolerable story, even if my review suggests that is is very rambling. You get to know the characters of not only Solomon of the title but also Eprahim, Moses, Lionel, other Gurskys. Seems to wander a bit but keeps your interest, barely. Finally you wonder if it was worth all the effort you put into reading it.
4/ 10
– – Krishna