This warm and lyrical semi-autobiographical first novel by singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen charts the coming of age of Lawrence Breavman, the only son of a Jewish Montreal family.'Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the world is made flesh.'Lawrence Breavman seeks two things: love and beauty. Beginning with the innocent games of delicious misadventure with first love Lisa and the absorbing wanders through Montreal with best friend Krantz, Breavman's tale is a distant echo of 'Catcher in the Rye' and 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' - injected with 1960s aesthetics and Cohen's unique poetry. As Breavman grows into a young man, the emerging writer continues his quest for beauty and love, finding himself in the arms of Shell and a burgeoning realisation of his own talent for appreciating majesty in the grotesque.Semi-autobiographical, the angst and beauty of Cohen's voice deftly channel the painful confusion of the journey into adulthood, and the friendships, wars and lovers that are our guides.

Leonard Cohen is a Canadian singer-songwriter, musician, poet and novelist. His first book of poetry, `Let Us Compare Mythologies¿, was published in 1956 and his first novel, the semi-autobiographical `The Favourite Game¿, in 1963. Cohen has recorded numerous albums and published several books of poetry and an experimental novel, `Beautiful Losers¿ (1966). Cohen lives in Montreal, Canada.