The fashion business meets Kabbalah in Montreal's garment district.In a novel that does for Chabanel Street what Mordecai Richler's The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz did for St. Urbain Street, a 36-year-old Orthodox Jew, Gershon Stein, collects rent in a large industrial building in the heart of Montreal's needletrade. Meanwhile, he struggles to reconcile his relationship with his ailing Holocaust-survivor father, find balance in his family life, and match wits with his arch-nemesis, Joey Putkin, an Israeli leather coat manufacturer leasing the basement of his building.Gershon's days are occupied by an array of colourful tenants: Arnie Free, who makes footwear for Hasidic Jews and strippers; Sonny Lipsey, whose shtick is giving industry characters the perfect nicknames; and the delicate Michelle Labelle, whose face seems to emit a mysterious light. If there is one thing Gershon knows, it's that life is rented and everyone has a debt to pay: to their landlord, their family, their community, and, most of all, to their soul.

B. Glen Rotchin has worked in the garment district of Montreal. His poetry and fiction have appeared in several literary journals, and he co-edited the poetry collections Jerusalem: An Anthology of Jewish Canadian Poetry and A Rich Garland: Poems for A.M. Klein.

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"The Rent Collector is a stunning debut. I can safely say this, because I'm stunned that this is the first novel Rotchin has published--it seems too self-assured, too well-written, and too wise to be such a thing." --Paul Quarrington, author of Whale Music and Galveston
"This complex, sensitive and erudite story thrusts us into a series of historical, spiritual and religious grey areas.... Rotchin's warm, aphoristic voice... skilfully crafts moments of humour, wisdom and sensuality." --Hour (Montreal)
"B. Glen Rotchin... [uses] an old-fashioned realist approach to tell an insistently small story with utmost care. The result is a genuine pleasure, a first novel of insight and tenderness." --The Gazette