Solomon Gursky Was Here by Mordecai Richler
Published 1990 · 557 pages · 167,250 words · about 12 hours at an average pace · Literary Fiction
How hard is Solomon Gursky Was Here to read?
Solomon Gursky Was Here scores 61 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 58 out of 100
- Richler writes in vigorous, allusive prose that ranges from Yiddish inflection to Arctic exploration to corporate intrigue. The vocabulary is demanding, reflecting the novel's encyclopedic reach across Jewish-Canadian experience.
- Sentence structure: 58 out of 100
- Sentences are energetic and often long, building through Richler's characteristic mixture of satire, tragedy, and tall tale. The prose has momentum, carrying readers through the family saga's wild turns.
- Abstraction: 60 out of 100
- The novel explores Jewish identity in the New World, the nature of myth and legend, and how families construct their histories. These abstractions are embedded in the Gursky saga's specific extravagances.
- Information density: 62 out of 100
- Arctic history, bootlegging, corporate power, and Jewish diaspora experience layer through multiple generations. Richler creates density through the sheer scope of the Gursky family's presence across Canadian history.
- Narrative indirection: 62 out of 100
- Moses Berger investigates Solomon Gursky, but Solomon may be a trickster figure who appears impossibly across time. The reader must piece together truth from legend, fact from Richler's inventions.
- Symbolic density: 62 out of 100
- Solomon himself becomes symbolic—a figure of Jewish survival and adaptation, a trickster who refuses to stay dead. The raven that recurs throughout carries mythic weight, linking Jewish and Indigenous traditions.
- Ironic distance: 60 out of 100
- Richler maintains sharp satirical distance from Canadian pretensions and Jewish assimilation while finding genuine tragedy in the Gursky story. The humor is dark and the losses real.
- Resolution withholding: 60 out of 100
- The novel's mysteries—who Solomon was, where he went, what he represented—remain unresolved. Richler refuses to pin down his legendary figure, leaving him alive in possibility.
- Structural complexity: 62 out of 100
- The novel leaps across a century, from Arctic expeditions to contemporary Montreal, with Moses's investigation providing the frame. The structure is demanding, requiring readers to track the Gursky generations and Solomon's impossible appearances.
How Solomon Gursky Was Here is regarded
Solomon Gursky Was Here holds a literary regard score of 59 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.