From Publishers Weekly Sault Ste. Marie's Jewish community in the 1930s, where Torgov grew up, is evoked in this Canadian memoir. Containing many mirthful moments, the book is deeply moving as well. Holding center stage is the author's profane, choleric, intolerant father. There is little about the boy's mother, who died when he was only 10, or the stepmother whom Torgov Sr. wed and then quickly divorced. Most of the fun as well as the sadness arises from duels between father and son and the latter's childhood escapades, such as conniving with a sympathetic maid to feast on forbidden foods. Torgov also brings to life members of the insular town's Jewish and Christian communities in his endearing anecdotes. Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Thomas Mann meets Mordecai Richler in this outstanding novel of great intellect and humour that already reads like a classic. The Frumkiss family doesn't look much different from any of the others in Toronto's Bathurst Manor. Grandpa survived the Holocaust; Grandma the Second came from Poland at the age of five. Dad's a foot doctor; Mom is dead, and her mother -- Grandma Number One --died while giving birth to her in Kazakhstan. Her three kids -- the oldest is forty-two -- are as frustrated and directionless as most baby boomers with no real financial worries. One's in Toronto, there's one in the suburbs and the third lives in Israel. As far as the Frumkisses know, all that distinguishes them from anybody else is that Grandpa is a famous Yiddish writer who ended up working for the CBC. But Grandpa's death sets off a chain of events that force the Frumkisses to see how different their family is from all the others. The Frumkiss Family Business , Michael Wex's brilliant and hilarious new novel, is a family saga for the twenty-first century, a lovingly accurate portrait of middle-class Canadian life at the turn of the century and of the Toronto neighbourhood that has produced such famous Canadians as Howie Mandel and Wex himself. Imagine Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks without the stodgy Germans or The Brothers Karamazov with only one brother. Finally, a novel that does for Toronto what Mordecai Richler's books did for Montreal.