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Title: The Weekend Man by Richard B. Wright ISBN: 0-451-08245-1 Publisher: Signet Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 1978 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $1.75

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (1 review)

Rating: 4
Summary: Often funny, dreary
Comment: The Weekend Man, Richard Wright's novel of a sales representative in an educational publishing house wading through life, is often hailed as a classic. I disagree, not because this isn't a good book -- it is -- but it lacks something, or perhaps it has too much of other things -- melancholy, perhaps immobility. The book is humorous, as Wright offsets incongruent elements; his timing is excellent. But there is something that drags you down about this novel. You want Wes Wakeham to wake up, to throw off his dreary everyman appearance and at the very least disagree with someone. But that's the whole point, I know, that he doesn't. Well, the device works -- Wes grinds you down. You want success for him that he doesn't want for himself. But success finds Wakeham whether he wants it to or not, with women, his job, his son.

The setting, Toronto about 1970, is sweet, almost quaint. The world was much quieter before the advent of 24-hour news services and the Internet, as Wright aptly shows. (The novel was first published in 1970, so it is a novel of the times, not a period piece.) The sexual and office politics are on the money. The characters are believable. They are everyone we know.

A fine novel, but not a masterpiece, not the great Canadian novel. A good read, all the same.