Like my parents, I read this book the summer
before I moved to Canada. It was one of the things that reassured me that I was
making the right decision. Rarely have (fictional?) family histories been this
epic and this well-written. True, Barney’s
Version might be the better book, but Solomon
Gursky is the more captivating of the two.
The richness of its anecdotes is something that
I often think only Jewish North American writers can provide, with the
characters showing the reader how to kill a polar bear and how to smuggle
alcohol. The charm of Ephraim (Solomon’s granddad) reminds me of that of
Melquiades in One Hundred Years of
Solitude. And whenever I see a raven (and I see a lot of them in London) I
think of this book.
One of the few novels that I think I should
re-read, pulling out the old family tree I had made for myself 11 years ago, and this time with a pen and
paper besides me to note down all the wonderful anecdotes that I have now
forgotten.
No comments:
Post a Comment