The Thousands

Now, I won’t profess to be a Leonard Cohen aficionado. But I do know that he is Montreal’s premiere export, second only to William Shatner (who has a building named after him at McGill University).

So, anyway, in 1963, Cohen wrote a novel. THE FAVOURITE GAME reads like Salinger with more sex and follows the early life of Larry Breavman, a precocious upstart who publishes his first book while still in college. Fuck you, Breavman! Some of us used our university experience to ‘develop as people’.

**Because Cohen himself published his first collection of short stories at age 22, readers of THE FAVOURITE GAME may wonder just how many details of the story are as semi-autobiographical as that one is. My, my, Mr Cohen – how convenient that Larry magically tumbles into bed with anyone he casts his salacious eye over. Convenient, indeed.

All the voracious appetites of youth, however, do not detract from the prose, which makes us fall completely in love with characters that might otherwise be reprehensible.