Howard Jacobsen - The Finkler Question

review by Malcolm on show 9th June
From the Cover

Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular former BBC radio producer, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevcik. Both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and together with Treslove they share a sweetly painful evening revisiting a time before they had loved and lost. It is that very evening, when Treslove hesitates a moment as he walks home, that he is attacked - and his whole sense of who and what he is slowly and ineluctably changes.

My Review

I read several of Howard Jacobson’s novels ages ago – back in the 80’s I think. Peeping Tom, Coming from Behind and Redback are memorable. They almost fit into that category of Campus Lit established by Kingsley Amis in Lucky Jim and Malcolm Bradbury in the History Man. But reading about the two old Jewish widowers, Libor and Sam, and the gentile Julian Treslove, unmarried but considered an honorary widower by his friends, as they reminisce about past times I was almost transported back to the Atlantic Inn any lunchtime.
Libor is a conventional Czech Jew whereas Sam is what he calls an ASHamed Jew. He is not ashamed of being Jewish, just of what the Jews are doing in the Middle East. Treslove is unmarried but considered an honorary widower by his friends. He is a worrier, about everything. After a meal together one evening Treslove is mugged outside a violin shop near Libor’s flat – his attacker is a woman and he is almost, but not quite, sure she calls him a Jew! He starts to worry that he looks Jewish and may actually be Jewish to the initial amusement of his friends. Then he starts to explore Jewish society and how those everyday Jews, he calls them “Finklers” live. He is invited to a Passover party and meets, and falls in love with Hepzibah (meaning we are told `My Delight is In Her`) and he moves into her apartment. But he is still intrigued by all things Jewish, and his not being a member of the Jewish family alienates him. He seeks further knowledge to the point when his Jewish friends start to get tired of him and inevitably their friendships are put under pressure and break down.

Quite a slow and difficult read with some funny parts. Maybe if I was Jewish I might have found it even funnier, but I learnt a lot of new words. I read the Kindle version, it helped a lot having a built in dictionary.

MFMartland Broadcast on Radio Scilly 9 June 2011