First impressions?
I had to start twice - at least. It was not easy to get beyond the first few pages because the central character, Julian Treslove, struck me as an irritating, narcissistic pain in the arse; a misanthrope. I asked myself, why would I want to spend more time with such a man? I don't know that I answered my own question. But does the immediacy of my reaction against the character indicate I was in the presence of great writing; a character so well constructed I took against him within three pages? Maybe. Maybe not.
I did stick with the novel in the end and I'm glad I did, although I'm pretty sure I didn't like it. Do you have to like a book to read it through? Clearly not. Would I recommend the novel to anyone to read? I'm not sure that I would. In fact I'm pretty sure I would not although I admire Howard Jacobson very much - mostly as a result of watching his cultural criticism on television and reading his columns in The Independent.
On the plus side there is the forceful, energetic voice of the author which is never far from the surface of the page. There are times when one can almost hear Howard Jacobson declaiming in the distinctive, insistent, impatient tone his public persona offers up in interviews, polemics, documentaries. Coming from a man as witty, perceptive and intelligent as HJ that voice is no bad thing. The novel is, as you might expect, remarkably clever, just like its author. It is laugh out loud in places, which is a real achievement in any novel but that wit and humour and well-placed sense of comic timing about the absurd contradictions of the human condition is built upon a melancholic foundation of inevitable loss and ultimately death - loss of youth, loss of love, loss of faith, loss of identity, place, purpose and self. It asks searching questions about the place of Jewish people in human history, the modern world and the unknown future offering no firm answers (at times it feels as if the author is arguing on the page with his own convictions and self-doubt). The novel seems to veer towards the fatalistic inevitability of a recurring doom in history in which Jewish people and non-Jews misunderstand Judaism, Jewish people and the relationships with non-Jewish cultures that ensue. The case against anti-Semitism is powerfully made. Its history, current (and resurgent) manifestations and consequences are worthy subjects for any writer to touch upon.
You can tell there's a 'but' on the way, can't you?
I felt throughout as if the author was shouting at me. Proclaim it Howard long enough and loud enough and the mere reader will eventually understand. Nothing in this world was ever quiet, contemplative, self-reflective even when we were told that a moment was supposed to be one, two or all three of those.
And I found it difficult - ever - to suspend disbelief. I was never persuaded that Julian Treslove and Samuel Finkler were real people in a successfully realised fictional world (the contrasting idea of "imaginary gardens with real toads in them" from Marianne Moore came to mind). The character of Libor seemed real to me - fondly drawn with fewer words than the archetypes / caricatures that were the two other principals. All the women are problematic - barely realised at all and - sadly - deployed most of the time as devices to tell us something about one or more of the men rather than being fully formed fictional beings in their own rights. Does Howard Jacobson have a female character problem? Evidence for: it's a woman who mugs Julian; Julian's past partners are essentially breeders identified solely as the mothers of his two very thinly painted sons; all women in Sam's life are objectified as not much more than possible sexual partners, his own dead wife is an adulterous, disappointed and vindictive woman. Evidence aganst: there's Hephzibah who arrives late in the piece but may be the most complete female character and Malkie, the dead wife of Libor, the most sympathetically portrayed but, you know, irrevocably dead.
The UK Daily Telegraph called it an "exuberant comedy of Jewishness". The Guardian review proclaimed "there's so much that is first rate in the manner of Jacobson's delivery that I could write all day on his deployment of language without once mentioning what the book is about." Elsewhere, The New York Times is less impressed and The New Yorker positively hostile.
Me? I may be that worst of things. Neither here nor there. I've finished reading it and I'm moving on. I suspect never to return.
