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Title: Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler ISBN: 0-7710-9972-X Publisher: New Canadian Library Pub. Date: 01 November, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.9 (20 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Irreverant humour and superb characterization and settings.
Comment: I was first introduced to Mr. Richler's writing when I read "Duddy" in the '70's. Since then, and partly because of Duddy, I have enjoyed many of Richler's books. The irreverent humour, fully realized characterization and exotic Montreal and Quebec settings make this book riveting. Duddy, a young, almost tragically (except it's too funny) ambitious man, embodies all the tensions and pitfalls of scheming to make a buck.
Rating: 4
Summary: a sad/funny look at an over-achieving flim-flam man (boy)
Comment: Mordecai Richler is certainly one of Canada's best novelists. His caustic sense of humour, his self-deprecating look at life, and his sometimes thinly disguised autobiographical stories are always memorable. Imagine Joseph (Catch-22) Heller being from Montreal and you have Mordecai Richler.
Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is one of Richler's earlier and better known (..thanks to the 1970s film adaptation) works. The story centers around a young Jewish teenager (Duddy), a very abrasive and aggressive boy, striving to make money in order to buy land (thinking, like his grandpa, that if you don't own land you ain't nuttin'). So Duddy gets into a strange, and hilarious, film-making business. His pushy and obnoxious behaviour both appalls and endears everyone he meets; I too was appalled and endeared. By the end of the book I felt I knew (but didn't like) Duddy.
While I did enjoy 'Duddy Kravitz' I have to say it certainly isn't Richler's best effort. I suggest Barney's Version, written some 30 years later, which demonstrates the author's abilities at his peak.
Bottom line: an endearing story of a lost youth in Montreal circa 1950. Fondly memorable.
Rating: 3
Summary: Too real or too fake?
Comment: Some people never learn, this is a story of one of them. Some may find this books a masterpiece, a child of a genious, but in my personal opinion its "rawness", its fake reality that is represented by the main character only gives you this grim feeling, this grayness of the life that he's living, which not all of us would appreciate. I do not recommend this book to those that like to relate to the main characters in the book because the protagonist of the story is in fact an anti-hero that is not only being sadistic and cruel to those that are close to him, but also does not realize it ad even ignores the facts.
This book, though written in an original style and is easy to read, does not deserve anything but 3 stars for a the reason of being too depressing, this is the same reason why I would never give anything but 4 stars even to such hits as Brave New World. Authors could just put it in better colors...it's possible, you know.
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Title: Barney's Version: A Novel by Mordecai Richler ISBN: 0671028464 Publisher: Washington Square Press Pub. Date: 01 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: A Simple Story by Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Hillel Halkin ISBN: 0815606184 Publisher: Syracuse University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title:Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz ASIN: 630021673X Publisher: Paramount Studio Pub. Date: 25 May, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.95 Comparison N/A, buy it from Amazon for $14.95 |
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Title: The Blue Mountain by Meir Shalev, Hillel Halkin ISBN: 1841952427 Publisher: Canongate Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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