The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson
Published by Bloomsbury Publications: London, Berlin, New York, 2010.
This book started out so promising. For the first few pages I was really enjoying the humour and world building going on. Julian Treslove is a tragic romantic, always anticipating (almost eagerly) the end of any relationship before he gets into it. As the book paints the picture of this hopeless character, I chuckle to myself at how much his imagination is running away with him, and in turn how much that is negatively affecting his life.
Tragically, though, Julian is not the sort of protagonist to learn from his mistakes. As the book progresses, Julian seems to make little breakthroughs, but by the end of the book is still just as confused as he began. This in itself is not a reason to dislike the book, as satire doesn’t always need to end in a redemptive arc, but the continuing unpleasantness of the behaviour that Julian and other characters indulge in during the narrative – and particularly the graphic discussions of things such as reversing circumcisions - eventually found me turning off the book altogether.
As my above statement suggests, The Finkler Question is another book to include Jewish themes, and once again those elements are among the most interesting parts of the narrative. Julian surrounds himself with Jewish friends – and indeed begins to think of himself as a Jew – and it is suggested that part of the reason for this is his association of Judaism with disappointment and his pessimistic leanings. Julian is the only non Jew of the three main characters, with the other two – Sam Finkler and Libor Sevcik – representing divergent views on their faith and culture, and on the whole, the latter two protagonists have more interesting arcs. The intent of Jacobson in writing may indeed have been to create well rounded Jewish characters and reduce the non Jewish character to more of a joke, but even so …
Completed 2 February 2018.
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