Barney’s version summary

Barney’s version is a novel written by Mordecai Richler. It is an autobiography with which Barney
Panofsky, the protagonist, wants to give his version - as the title suggests - about his best friend’s
death, Bernard Moscovitch, as known as Boogie. In fact, many years before, Barney was charged of
killing Boogie and he decides, almost at the threshold of his seventies and suffering from
Alzheimer’s, to write his memoir in order to clear himself of that accusation and somehow to
rearrange the pages of his life.
As I said, Barney suffers from Alzheimer’s, a degenerative desease that causes him serious dementia
problems. For this reason, the story is not presented in a cronological way; it doesn’t follow a precise
timeline and very often Barney uses digressions, flashbacks and this of course makes the novel very
intricate and the plot not easy to understand, above all in the first pages. As he tells his story, he
also makes a lot of mistakes and shows mental lapses that are meticolously corrected by his first
son, Michael with many footnotes. A great concentration is required not to lose yourself in Barney’s
stories of his youth in Paris, for example, or in the tragicomic vicissitudes of his three marriages.
How could we describe Barney, as a character? Undoubtedly he is a cinic, revengeful, aggressive
and extremely jealous person, above all of his third wife, Miriam Greenberg the one and only woman
he had ever loved. He is an alcholist and this aspect plays a fundamental role in his life. Because of
it, he neglects people around him, and when he is drunk, he always ends up by umiliating the ones
who love him.
His first wife is Clara Charnofsky, an eccentric artist, a tormented soul that Barney meets in Paris.
Here, he was part of a group of would-be-writers. Clara had a complicated childhood and she is
described as a phobic person, with strange habits. Despite this, she is a painter, she writes poems
and her name will be famous through time, and after her death she becomes also a feminist icon.
She committs suicide and Barney, feeling guilty for not being able to save her, decides to leave
France and go back in Canada, in Montreal.
Back to Canada, Barney founds a company, “The Totally Unnecessary Productions” and becomes a
rich TV producer of trashy programmes and commercials. He marries again with the Second Mrs
Panofsky, an unnamed woman from a good Jewish family, who however he didn’t love and in fact
the marriage soon fails when Barney discovers that his wife cheated on him with his best friend,
Boogie. When Barney discovers the betrayal at the cottage, (even if he wanted to divorce because
he was already in love with Miriam) he gets angry with Boogie; both drunk, they start to quarrell
and at last Barney fires a warning shot while Boogie falls into the lake disappearing forever. Richler
here, leaves the reader completely in suspense, in fact we don’t know until the very last pages of
the novel, whether Barney killed Boogie or not.
This episode tragically marks Barney’s life, in fact he starts to be suspected of having killed Boogie
and even accused by Terry McIver in his autobiograpghy. Terry McIver can be described as writer
who was part of that group in Paris, an envious person, always looking for fame in fact he has no
qualms about accusing Barney even if he’s totally unaware of how actually the facts happened that
day.
Barney meets Miriam the day of his second marriage. She was invited at his wedding and when
Barney sees her for the first time, he completely falls in love. From that moment he starts to court
her, sending her flowers, inviting her out. In the end, they happily get married and have three
children: Michael, Saul and Kate. Michael is very clever, a brilliant mind, he moves to London, to
study and then marries Caroline and makes a lot of money. Saul, he lives in New York, he’s a writer
and he can be considered very similar to his father, a reckless guy, constantly changing his ideas and
partners. Kate on the other hand is a teacher, she lives in Toronto and in terms of her character,
she’s more like Miriam; she’s very very close to her father and she feels some kind of resentment
towards his mother because one day, after discovering that Barney had cheated on her, Miriam
decides to put an end to their marriage, and then to start a new relationship with another man, Blair
Hauptman.
One day, Boogie’s body is finally found in the forest on the mountains near the cottage. His fatal
injuries are consistent with a sky diving accident. The novel ends with Barney being formally
diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease and facing a short slide into complete dementia and then
death.
His son Michael, who has been editing the memoir, goes to their family cottage and stands on the
porch looking out over the lake. He witnesses a “water bomber” plane descending to scoop up
hundreds of gallons of water from the lake to dump elsewhere and put out fires, implying that
Boogie might have been swimming when one of these planes came, scooping him up along with
the water and depositing him in the mountains far away. And here he also realizes that the
suspicions he had on his father turned out to be wrong.