Book review: Standup comedy approach to Winnipeg, curling and the Jewish diaspora
Credit to Author: Tracey Tufnail| Date: Fri, 14 Feb 2020 19:00:39 +0000
Michael Tregebov | New Star Books
$22 | 220 pp
If Mordecai Richler had grown up in Winnipeg, he might have written deft, hilarious books very much like Michael Tregebov’s The Briss (2009) and The Shiva (2012), in which the Winnipeg born and UBC educated Tregebov has comic fun with his memories of growing up Jewish in the Peg.
Now, Vancouver’s New Star Books has published a third Winnipeg satire from Tregebov, Shot Rock, a book that accomplishes an unlikely task — making a book about curling both funny and interesting.
Tregebov has lived and worked as a translator in Spain for decades now.
Like his earlier novels, Shot Rock is set in Winnipeg’s vibrant Jewish community and features fast paced, funny dialogue and a satirical plot line. In this case, the plot turns on an attempt by a group of middle-aged curlers to prevent the sale of Winnipeg’s only Jewish curling rink. Led by Blackie Timmerman, this valiant band of friends ally with Blackie’s son Tino and Tino’s pal Micheal, both campus Trotskyists, to mount a petition campaign to save the rink and defeat the plots of their nemesis, the sinister Max Foxman.
Tregebov has some good-natured fun with the ill-fated campaign, with Blackie’s broken heart and new love interest, and with the owlish earnestness of the young college radicals. Imagine Richler, Lenny Bruce and Sarah Silverman collaborating to bring the best of their distinctive genius for comedy to bear on a Canadian content epic about the diaspora, curling and leftism.
Sometimes, when critics wants to suggest a book’s value is limited by parochial concerns or depends inordinately on little known facts, we say it is an “inside baseball” text, and thus dismissible. A critic with that kind of slur in mind might refer to Shot Rock as an “inside curling” fiction. That critic would be wrong.
Although a reader familiar with curling, Yiddish and the specialized language and postures of fiercely dedicated young Marxists — a topic on which Tregebov is well versed from his own political activity — will recognize more of the author’s allusions than someone who has never enjoyed the mixed blessings of a Winnipeg winter, a shot rock or an earnest session of political criticism/self criticism, none of that background is necessary to enjoy this wonderful book. Highly recommended.
Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at tos65@telus.net