Lies My Father Told Me

LIES MY FATHER TOLD ME isn't about lies, really, but about certain truths that a little boy and his grandfather fiercely refuse to accept. The boy, 8 years old, is a bright kid and his father and grandfather have very different notions of what he should be taught. The father is an ambitious young man who dreams of escaping from Montreal's Jewish ghetto, circa 1925, with inventions like expanding cufflinks and creaseless trousers. The grandfather is an old-country Jew with old ways; he keeps a horse in a stable out behind the house, and every day he and the horse trace their junk route, buying and selling, trading gossip, holding to a beloved routine. The family conflict is played out against a ghetto populated with the usual stock characters: a Marxist, a shrewish neighbor, a whore with a heart of gold.