Athena K.'s Review - The Finkler Question

I have to say it up front - I didn't love this book.  The first several pages of The Finkler Question introduce us to a rather unsympathetic protagonist, who is so obsessed with Jewish culture that he thinks he might actually, secretly, be Jewish - despite a complete absence of evidence to suggest it. His obsession starts to border on, and then crosses the line into the realm of racism; specifically, anti-Semitism.  This is where I got uncomfortable and frustrated with the book.


Throughout the novel, we experience the inner thoughts of Julian Treslove, a womanizer and spinner of romantic-tragic fantasies usually involving the untimely death of women he loves - who he has also just met.  He's a man who has failed in all significant aspects of his life - love, career, fatherhood - and he's not someone I have any real expectation that he will turn his life around.  After a trivial incident involving being mugged and thinking, perhaps, that his mugger, a woman, called him a "Jew," Julian grows more and more obsessed with anything and everything Jewish.  Most of his inner thoughts take the form of backhanded compliments (as an almost random example, he assumes a young girl to be precocious because she is also Jewish) But his thoughts come from a place of exotifying and idealizing the Other.  He and the other characters we meet think almost always in terms of "us" and "them" - Jews and non-Jews.  It gets grating after a while.  Perhaps it made me uncomfortable because it forced me to think about the fact that we all have similar conversations internally - thoughts that if we shared would be considered racist (or sexist, ageist, etc.), but we can't prevent our minds from drawing distinctions or repeating stereotypes, even if we can choose not to say them aloud. It made me uncomfortable to consider this for too long. 


But I still wanted to know why Julian was so obsessed with Jewish culture - was it his empty childhood and the desire to be part of a family?  His obsession with tragedy?  His buried jealousy of Sam Finkler?  I'm still not sure I know.


In the end, the broader subject matter (Israel and Palestine, hate crimes, memory and love) as well as the incredible depth each of the main characters possesses - especially Libor in his grief - redeemed book for me in some ways.  Jacobson's precise character description, delivery of dialogue, and clever use of language certainly establish him as a great novelist.  But I still find myself wanting to read the other 2010 finalists to see if I would have chosen differently. 

Marie's Review- The Finkler Question

The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson. Published 2010 by Bloomsbury.

The upset winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize, The Finkler Question is nonetheless not exactly a crowd-pleaser. A serious, sophisticated novel about emotionally and intellectually challenging problems, focusing on a niche topic (how to be Jewish- and not- in modern day Great Britain) and a satire to boot, it's simply not destined for universal adulation. But that doesn't mean it's not a good book.

The center of the novel is the identity crisis of a loser named Julian Treslove. Julian Treslove has failed at just about everything. He's failed at a conventional career with the BBC. He's failed in love; he's failed at being a parent. Now a fairly successful impersonator of the famous, about the only thing he is good at is pretending to be someone else.

One night Julian is walking home from a party and he is mugged. He believes that his attacker was a woman, which makes him feel like a failure as a man, and he believes that his attacker called him a Jew. This gets Julian to thinking. He has two close friends- Sam Finkler and Libor Sevcik. Sam is successful and rich, a younger man who's made a career as a writer and Libor is an older emigre from Eastern Europe, recently mourning the death of his wife. Julian admires them both and both Sam and Libor are Jewish. Somewhere in the back of Julian's mind, something takes hold, and, hanging his hat on the belief that his mother may have been of Jewish descent, he decides to be Jewish, too. And things start looking up for Julian. His sons, estranged and contemptuous of their father,  take a little more interest. Julian falls in love with the voluptuous, artistic Earth-mother Hephzibah, who seems to love him back.

But this, too, will probably not work out.  Sam is a lacksidaisical activist in an anti-Zionist group and tries, in his personal and public life, to define the boundaries of what gentiles can do and how he will allow or not allow them to participate in Jewish life; he doesn't support Julian on principle. In one scene, Sam excoriates a gentile woman for having an opinion on the Israel/Palestine dispute, saying in effect that because she's not Jewish she has no right to comment. Libor can't figure out why Julian would want to be Jewish in the first place. Julian wants Hephzibah to be a kind of uber-Jewess but she just wants to be herself. The more Julian tries to participate in his friends' Jewish world, the more he's excluded from it and the more bitter he becomes. In the end it's a tragedy that bursts his bubble and forces all of them apart.

Being Jewish, it seems, is not as simple as putting on a kippah and flashing your mother's DNA like a ticket. Ultimately Julian's problem is that he's not Jewish. He idealizes the Jewish world only to be disappointed by the reality as he experiences it. For me, Julian's internal process figuring out his place in this new-to-him world is fascinating to watch. The experience of the gentile in the Jewish world is not a topic often addressed in literature (the only other example I can think of is Chandler Burr's very different novel, You or Someone Like You) and the degree of empathy and insight that Jacobson has into his confused protagonist is pretty impressive. He nails it; he really does, and he does so with a great deal of compassion. This is not an easy thing to talk about- not without sounding like a jerk, anyway, and some people might still think Julian is a jerk. I think he merely allows himself to be mislead by his own failures and weak sense of self into a fight he can't win.

A character-driven novel for the literary reader, I'll admit The Finkler Question is not the most exciting page-turner out there. It's not the right book for the page-turner crowd anyway. And I know there were other Booker nominees that received more universal applause. So what. It's a brave, important book and I'd recommend it for readers who are willing to stretch themselves a little to take on a challenging subject. You're not going to love Julian; you may not even like him. You may think he's dead wrong and in need of a good smack upside the head. And Jacobson's book may make you frustrated and uncomfortable, but it may also make you think, and that's what great literature is really all about.

You can see my original review on my blog here.

Alex's Review - The Finkler Question

Hi everyone

This is my first posting....I have read only a few Booker winners - most of them from the past ten years and a few earlier ones e.g. Iris Murdoch - The Sea, The Sea and Anita Brookner - Hotel du Lac.

Thank you Laura for creating this blog - it's a great idea and so useful when you've just read a book and want to see what other's experience of it was.....please find my review of the latest winner below.

The back cover of this book is described as "A blistering portrayal of a funny man...." and "Our funniest living writer....". It is always dangerous to describe things as funny. A bit like saying to someone "I saw this great movie last night!"...a sure set-up for disappointment.

I finished this book on the weekend. I now owe the Brisbane City Council Library $1.75 in late fees for it. I was determined to finish it by hook or by crook. I think I laughed maybe twice.

This year for me seems to have been marked by books about vampires and books about Jews or Jewishness. I haven't deliberately chosen this path. I merely remark upon it and I mean nothing by the association. I am just intrigued by it. So far I am finding neither genre or subject matter an easy read - certainly not funny.

Let's talk about the Jews we know. Or what it means to be Jewish. Yes, let's talk about stereotypes. Bette Midler. Woody Allen. They come to my mind. I often quote Bette Midler's line in Beaches "But enough about me, let's talk about you,........what do You think about me?" Neurotic. Self-obsessed. Funny. Sad.

The Finkler Question is about three men who come together in grief. The main character Julian Treslove is a kind of an anti-hero. He was born to be miserable. He is excruciatingly pathetic. He is so miserable he secetly fantasises about being Jewish. A bit like you fantasise about being adopted....anything not to have been born into this awfully boring suburban family. Give me a bit of the exotic...make me Jewish! His best friend from school Sam Finkler is Jewish and all that Julian wishes he was - smart, successful, a bedder of countless women. They keep in touch with an old teacher from their school days - turned friend - Libor - an eccentric loveable Czech, also Jewish. Libor and Sam are recently bereaved and Julian revels with them in their misery.

Spoiler alert! The book is called The Finkler Question. And, of course, as the reader you thirst to know why. It is Julian's secret way of internally de-stigmatising the word "Jew". And I quote..."Before he met Finkler, Treslove had never met a Jew. Not knowingly at least. He supposed a Jew would be like the word Jew - small and dark and beetling. A secret person. But Finkler was almost orange in colour and spilled out of his clothes. He had extravagant features, a prominent jaw, long arms and big feet....If this was what all Jews looked like, Treslove thought, then Finkler....was a better name for them than Jew.....The minute you talked about the Finkler Question, say, or the Finklerish Conspiracy, you sucked out the toxins. But he was never quite able to get around to explaining this to Finkler himself."

That last sentence I believe holds the key to the book. Why doesn't Julian get around to explaining his labelling to Sam? And therein lies the genius I guess of Howard Jacobson. Because Julian is a loathsome character. He is in fact like some kind of small dark beetle...a secret person. He, like a vampire, sucks the lifeblood out of his friends and girlfriends/wives/lovers. He purports to be deeply interested in being Jewish but is frustrated when the going gets tough....His lover Hephzibah recommends reading Moses Maimonides' The Guide for the Perplexed when he seeks enlightenment with regard to Jewish thought.....but poor Julian can barely make it beyond the first sentence and feels "like a child lost in a dark forest full of decrepit lucubrations." He is lost because he is never honest with himself about his motivations and he is certainly never honest with his friends about his innermost thoughts.

I wonder if by The Finkler Question in fact Jacobson is referring to the Human Question. Ultimately I felt I loathed Julian because I was seeing a reflection of myself.....see it's all about me!!! He disappointed me the same way I disappoint myself. There was no great triumph or change in Julian's character...he was excruciating from beginning to end...failing to see what a tosspot he was...as indeed no doubt we all do of ourselves. For me, The Finkler Question is about the mystery of the human condition...about our eternal quest to label, categorize, blame and explain the inexplicable.

Laugh? I could have cried.

Laura's Review - The Finkler Question

I couldn't get into this book, no matter how hard I tried. I'm not even sure what to say in a review!

The book opens with a middle-aged man, Julian Treslove, getting mugged one night after a dinner with his friends Sam Finkler and Libor Sevcik. Sam and Libor are recently widowed; Julian has gone from one woman to the next, leaving the detritus of relationships -- including two now-grown children -- in his wake. Sam and Libor are Jews, which fascinates Julian. As he recovers from the shock of being mugged, his fascination turns into an obsession. He attempts to "become Jewish," although in more of a cultural than religious sense.

At first, I thought perhaps I just didn't understand the Jewish cultural references. And I really didn't like the characters. Then I read a review that gave me hope, saying the second half of the book was better. I persevered. And it was better, but not enough to salvage it for me. It was a very "talky" book, with endless conversation about both big ideas and minutiae. I found the chapters devoted to Libor the most moving, as he mourned the recent loss of his wife. But Sam was a stuffy prat, and Julian was a selfish jerk.

I normally enjoy Booker Prize winners. But not this one.



My original review can be found here.

Trevor's Review of Jacobson's The Finkler Question

In short, I loved this book and, though my favorite book on the shortlist was In a Strange Room, I was thrilled when it was announced as the winner last night. I began it warily the day the shortlist was announced. Well, any wariness wore off quickly. The first few pages were incredibly funny to me. Jacobson certainly connected with me and, with superb stlye, made me laugh and shudder throughout.

So it is funny and sad as it examines loss and grief, but it is also very timely. Its looks at religious identity in modern society are important, and Jacobson has a flury of perspectives from which he presents this material.

For my complete review, please click here.