St. Urbain's Horseman
A Novel
Book - 1971 | 1st ed
St. Urbain's Horseman is a complex, moving, and wonderfully comic evocation of a generation consumed with guilt - guilt at not joining every battle, at not healing every wound. Thirty-seven-year-old Jake Hersh is a film director of modest success, a faithful husband, and a man in disgrace. His alter ego is his cousin Joey, a legend in their childhood neighbourhood in Montreal. Nazi-hunter, adventurer, and hero of the Spanish Civil War, Joey is the avenging horseman of Jake's impotent dreams. When Jake becomes embroiled in a scandalous trial in London, England, he puts his own unadventurous life on trial as well, finding it desperately wanting as he steadfastly longs for the Horseman's glorious return. Irreverent, deeply felt, as scathing in its critique of social mores as it is uproariously funny, St. Urbain's Horseman confirms Mordecai Richler's reputation as a pre-eminent observer of the hypocrisies and absurdities of modern life.
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Publisher:
Toronto : McClelland and Stewart, 1971
Edition:
1st ed
ISBN:
9780394444734
0394444736
0394444736
Branch Call Number:
FIC/RIC
Comment
Add a CommentBrillliant. A master wordsmith at his finest. One of the finest novelists this Canada has ever produced. St. Urbain's Horseman examines that part of human nature where we examine the gap that exists between who we are and what we have become. Who we are, what others think we are and the person we would like to have been. Told in the humorous way that Richler has perfected.
In places this book is very well written and engrossing while in other places it's aggravating. Richler's fascination with unpleasant or even downright despicable characters is a bit off-putting; meanwhile he seems to regard honorable, decent, virtuous people with a degree of contempt. The main character Jake is self-destructive and a bit narcissistic, which constrains any sympathy the reader may develop regarding his self-inflicted misfortunes. The "Horseman", a fantasy persona that Jake assigns to his cousin Joey, fails to engage me as a reader. In the end,the book doesn't live up to its billing.