Eighteen-year-old Robbie Bookbinder is bummed out and bored, cut adrift in the mid-1970s – the decade he calls The Great Hangover. Sex feels outmoded, drugs don’t seem to deliver like they used to, and rock and roll’s a bust in tired old Montreal. Quebec’s arming up for a cultural revolution, and bike gangs are warring in the streets. In Robbie Bookbinder, we meet a character who embodies all the potential, self-delusion, and resilience of contemporary youth. All Robbie thinks he needs is a kick-start. What he gets is scared half to death, as he discovers that life only improves when you take a stand in it.

Daniel Richler's profile page

Daniel Richler, a Gemini Award-winning broadcaster and National Magazine Award-winning journalist, is currently Editor-in-Chief/Supervising Producer of BookTelevision: The Channel and the host of The Word. He lives in Toronto.

“A funny, honest portrait etched in sharp, original, and exuberant prose. More, please.”
–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“An exhilarating romp.…[It] crackles with wit and insight.”
–Geoff Pevere, Globe and Mail

“A combination of Portnoy’s Complaint and a gutsy Catcher in the Rye for the nineties.”
–CBC-TV’s The Journal