We must separate the writer from his or her fictional hero. This is a first rule of literary judgment. Joshua Shapiro is the hero. He is a writer….

Joshua did become famous as a star of personality on Canadian television, for which he had contempt. "Anybody good on camera was an abomination to him, yet he owed his reputation to television."

Mordecai Richler, on the other hand, according to his publisher, "is generally considered Canada's most important writer…." All right, now I am clear that Joshua Shapiro cannot be Richler, and I am glad. Here is a book in which viewpoint is so perfectly rendered, so exquisitely pure, that the author successfully places himself at an invisible distance.

This leaves Joshua exposed, and the trouble may be that it's Joshua I don't like. I find it difficult to root for him. I don't like him. He is one...