[We] don't mind in the least that all [the tantalizing mysteries of "Joshua Then and Now"] are dangled before us without resolution until we have zigzagged all the way across Mr. Richler's teeming canvas. For he has crammed into his book so much in the way of gags, social satire, suspense, stinging dialogue, sports and political trivia … that the resolutions to these comic-pathetic mysteries are so much icing on a very rich cake.

What I admire especially about "Joshua Then and Now" is that Mr. Richler never permits his comic shticks to run away with his story. This not only establishes him as superior member of a certain class of contemporary Jewish novelists … who is so burdened by the weight of his past experience and the vulnerability of being human, that only the most outrageous clowning will serve to keep the pain at bay. It also enables Mr...