Mordecai and Me

About this book

"Mordecai & Me is the story of one writer's obsession with another. In this "really unauthorized biography," Joel Yanofsky, a veteran Montreal book reviewer, literary journalist, and novelist, tracks the elusive legend of Mordecai Richler in the year following his death. He was a curmudgeon, Yanofsky says of Richler, but he was our curmudgeon. A man of contradictions, Mordecai Richler inspired mixed feelings in just about everyone who read and met him. Yanofsky is no exception. This insightful and quirky quest leads him to consult (though pester may be more like it) a rabbi, a shrink, a dream analyst, as well as his long-suffering wife, in his search for the man in Richler's books and the man behind them. On a journey that includes a walking tour of Richler's old St. Urbain Street neighbourhood, a visit to the Bronfman mansion, a disastrous television interview, and a search for an alcoholic beverage he can call his own, Yanofsky provides the richest portrait yet of the most interesting character Mordecai Richler never wrote about - himself."--BOOK JACKET.