First published 1973
Jake Hersh sits in a London courtroom, thirty-seven years old and watching his reputation crumble. A modestly successful film director with a faithful marriage, he now finds himself caught up in a scandalous trial that threatens everything he has built. As the proceedings unfold, Jake's thoughts drift to his cousin Joey, the legendary figure from their Montreal childhood neighborhood. Joey embodies everything Jake is not: a Nazi hunter, an adventurer, a veteran of the Spanish Civil War. In Jake's mind, Joey becomes the avenging horseman of his fantasies, the hero he wishes he could be. The trial forces Jake to examine his own cautious life and find it lacking. He longs for Joey's return, for some sign that heroism still exists in a world full of compromise and cowardice. Richler weaves together Jake's present crisis with memories of his past, creating a story that captures the guilt of a generation caught between grand dreams and mundane reality.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, canadian-literature
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: London, Montreal
Period: 1930s, 1970s
384 pages · Paperback · Panther