Oh, how long since I had last read a Richler novel. Sure, my former Canadian teachers presented him as an awful human being (years before my time there, he came to give a guest lecture at our school and left everyone rather unimpressed), but in terms of North American Jewish writers for me he's right up there with Roth and Bellow.
St Urbain's Horseman doesn't have the epicness of Solomon Gursky Was Here or the comedy and mystery of Barney's Version, but it remains an impressive book. Large sections of the book are set in a London that I don't find too drastically changed in nearly 50 years. The parts about the legendary horseman are wonderful portraits of Canadian life in the first half of the 20th century, and the idea of him looking for Mengele (though not even the narrator actually believes that, probably) are the work of a genius.
Without the Jewish elements I probably wouldn't have enjoyed this book this much. But the fact is, the Jewish elements are very much there and so, unsurprisingly, this book is a winner for me.
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