Mordecai Richler · 1997 · global

Mordecai Richler's 1997 novel, the cantankerous, unreliable memoir of Barney Panofsky, a Montreal TV producer goaded into setting the record straight after an old friend's autobiography paints him as a wife-abuser, a fraud and a murderer. His version loops across the Atlantic world of his life: a Montreal boyhood, a bohemian young manhood in 1950s Paris where his first wife kills herself, years in London, and a return to Montreal, three wives, and one famous unsolved question, all narrated by a mind beginning to fail him.

1. 1
   Montreal

   Montreal, where the curmudgeonly Barney Panofsky begins setting down his version of a wasted, riotous life and its three marriages.

2. 2
   Paris

   Paris of the early 1950s, his bohemian young manhood among would-be writers and painters, where his first wife Clara takes her own life.

3. 3
   London

   London, and the years of hustle and reinvention before the long pull home.

4. 4
   Montreal

   And back to Montreal, to Totally Useless Productions, to Miriam, the love he ruins, and to a memory unravelling thread by thread as he writes.