[We] don't mind in the least that all [the tantalizing mysteries of "Joshua Then and Now"] are dangled before us without resolution until we have zigzagged all the way across Mr. Richler's teeming canvas. For he has crammed into his book so much in the way of gags, social satire, suspense, stinging dialogue, sports and political trivia … that the resolutions to these comic-pathetic mysteries are so much icing on a very rich cake.

What I admire especially about "Joshua Then and Now" is that Mr. Richler never permits his comic shticks to run away with his story. This not only establishes him as superior member of a certain class of contemporary Jewish novelists … who is so burdened by the weight of his past experience and the vulnerability of being human, that only the most outrageous clowning will serve to keep the pain at bay. It also enables Mr. Richler to keep in precarious balance the sort of outlandish situation comedy that explains why Joshua is wearing those lace panties at the beginning, and the tragic family situation that has caused his wife to have a nervous breakdown.

How does Mr. Richler manage this balance? Simply by scrambling Joshua's past into so many brief scenes that no single mood or character (except Joshua, of course) is ever permitted to dominate the novel. Yet the dozens of scenes skipping back and forth in time are so skillfully interlocked that a reader never loses track or interest. (pp. 337-38)

[Mr. Richler] succeeds in portraying the warm father-son relationship that exists between Reuben and Joshua, especially in contrast to the mutually destructive one that persists between Pauline's father, the WASPy Senator, and her playboy brother, Kevin. And thus he satirizes both the upwardly mobile Jews of Montreal and their smugly racist gentile counterparts, yet still manages to paint a telling portrait of their uneasy and mutually fascinated relationship.

Not everything in the book works perfectly. The incident in Ibiza does not live up to its enticing promise, mainly because a German who humiliates Joshua, Dr. Gunther Mueller (he has two doctorates, both awarded in Vienna), is too broad a caricature to come into focus as a character. And the ending of the book is a touch on the sentimental side for a novel that has wreaked so much satirical havoc. But all in all "Joshua Then and Now" is a remarkable bittersweet accomplishment. Its slapstick and pathos blend artfully to make a wine of unique flavor. (p. 338)