Barney Panofsky's trashy TV company, Totally Useless Productions, has made him a small fortune. His three wives include a martyred feminist icon, a quintessential JCP (Jewish-Canadian Princess), and the incomparable Miriam, the perfect wife, lover, and mother - alas, now married to another man. Barney recalls with nostalgia and pain his young manhood in the Paris of the early fifties, and his lifelong passion for wine, women, and the Montreal Canadiens; who either did or didn't murder his best friend, Boogie, after discovering him in bed with The Second Mrs. Panofsky. His satirical eye for the idiocies of today's Quebec separatists (as well as for every other kind of political correctness) manages to offend his entire acquaintanceship. 

Mordecai Richler's comic energy and steely disregard for any pieties whatsoever make this novel a masterpiece and a quite different portrait of Montreal.