With letters from Mordecai Richler, Mavis Gallant, and Brian Moore Getting Started is a wonderful memoir, a collection of extraordinary letters, and a brilliant recreation of a time when Canadian writers were set to make their mark in the world for the first time. Writer Brian Moore emigrated from Ireland to Canada in the late 1940s and found work at the Montreal Gazette, where he also found William Weintraub embarking upon a career as a freelance journalist. When he travelled to Paris, Weintraub saw an old friend and former Gazette writer, Mavis Gallant, who filled him in on the tribulations of the expatriate writer’s life ( “My room is enormous and the radiator very small indeed” ). Gallant introduced Weintraub to another Montreal writer, Mordecai Richler, also pursuing a career as a novelist while living a gloriously Bohemian life. Weintraub joined Richler for a while in Ibiza (he later introduced him to Brian Moore), and later they kept in touch. ( “Dear Bill: I got your highly unintellectual letter yesterday and it confirmed my suspicions that you slipped a chair under your arse in the Deux Magots as soon as you arrived in Paris and probably haven’t moved since.” ) In these years, Gallant had her short stories published for the first time in the New Yorker, Moore methodically churned out money-making thrillers while working on The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne , and Richler wrote his first acclaimed book, The Acrobats . Weintraub, meanwhile, returned to Montreal, where he saw published his brilliant comic novel, Why Rock the Boat? William Weintraub weaves together his own memories of the 1950s with letters both to and from his literary colleagues. The letters and his recollections are always fascinating, often hilarious, and provide intimate insight into the lives and work of some of Canada’s finest contemporary writers. From the Hardcover edition.

The author of City Unique takes us back to the wicked old Montreal of 1948 in this fine, funny novel, where an innocent seventeen-year-old McGill student falls for a famous stripper “ Catcher in the Rye meets Guys and Dolls ”? Maybe. Or how about “Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall comes to Mordecai Richler’s Montreal”? Close. But best of all is simply this: “William Weintraub — friend of Richler, Moore, and Gallant — has quietly produced a mature comic masterpiece.” Our hero, Richard Lippman, is about to enter McGill and is desperate for two things — a sense of direction in life and, much more important, sexual experience with a real, live girl. Unknown to his “refined” Westmount parents, he’s brought into the exciting Montreal world of burlesque and brothels by his Uncle Morty, who introduces him to Lili L’Amour, the star stripper of the day. Before you know it, he’s (a) head over heels in love with Lili and (b) using his poetic talents to write the text for her routine, and even giving her tips on how to move. Much follows, including his creation of “Freckles, The Girl Next Door,” a stripping sensation. By day a respectful McGill student courted by campus Communists, by night a free-spending night-club sampler and reviewer — well, it’s quite a year for Richard. And this is quite a novel for all of us. Watch for falling prizes. From the Hardcover edition.