SOURCE: Kelly, J. B. “Holy Lands.” National Review 46, no. 24 (19 December 1994): 56-7.

In the following review, Kelly criticizes the incoherent and disjointed structure of This Year in Jerusalem, labelling the book as “an exercise in self-justification.”

It was only when I was halfway through reading Mordecai Richler's book [This Year in Jerusalem] that I began to understand why I was so uncomfortable with it: why its structure is all over the place, why its constituent parts hang so awkwardly together, and why the whole seems pervaded by an air of maudlin introspection. It is because in large measure it is an expiatory work, an exercise in self-justification. Mr. Richler has made two visits to Israel, the first in 1962, the second thirty years later, and he has been stung on both occasions by the contempt expressed by many of the Israelis he encountered for the Jews of the Diaspora, especially...