tre stelle e mezzo.

There's an interesting book in here somewhere, just took too many additional tangents to get there.

I’ve had Howard Jacobson recommended to me by someone at work for a couple of months now and I was finally persuaded to read him after finding an Intelligence Squared/Bloomsbury Institute book club event for his latest novel Zoo Time.

I have to admit that I was at first slightly deterred by the very sarcastic tone of the narrator…but thankfully it managed to avoid crossing that line between witty and obnoxious - in fact it became one of the things I love about the novel. So the story is told from the perspective of novelist Guy Ableman, who was made popular by his first work but is now struggling to follow up with something just as successful.

In the end, Guy’s sense of humour was one of the things I liked most about the book. The whole novel is generally funny but there were particularly hilarious passages dotted here and there that made me literally laugh out loud.

A huge part of the novel is also about identity - partly regarding Guy’s ignored Jewish ID but also addressing the bigger issue of whether a writer is his work. Personally, I think a lot of authors are frustrated with readers attempting to find comparisons between them and their protagonists and this book coincides with that view.

Another over-arching theme is the way in which publishing is changing. Guy and many of the people he works with spend the book having to reconcile to the fact that publishing is moving into the digital age and readers are getting more control over what should be published - although some find this impossible to do.

In the end I bought two more Jacobson books at the event so I think this is evidence that I certainly rate him! I think it’s unique theme is one of it’s best qualities but being partial I can’t say whether it’s a story that would appeal to people less enthralled with the state of literature or the publishing world. I do think if you love books you’ll love this book - I certainly did!

DNF …. I struggled for almost 100 pages before coming to my senses and realising that life is too short to waste any more time on it. There’s nothing to like about this book: it lacks humour, warmth, humanity and it is populated with wooden caricatures. Nothing remotely of interest. It’s as if the author is writing about himself - trying really hard to persuade readers that there is something important in a book that is totally lacking in substance.

I think that I would love to hang out with Jacobson, he seems like exactly the kind of sarcastic, funny, well-read self-deprecating egomaniac that I would enjoy the company of, but I did not enjoy reading this book. Maybe it was the way the main character fetishized his women--they didn't feel real to me. The women were accessories to his life, they were his satellites, not real people with their own drives and desires. Although I did love the rants about the death of the reader. As a librarian, I can certainly relate, I've felt the same kind of derisive bile at times. I might try The Finkler Question, I passed it up when it came out. From most accounts it was better than this one.

Oh god i wish people knew how to describe humour because this is certainly not it

4.5 stars - review to come

Roughly 80% in and I just could not take anymore. I’m fine with main characters that I love to loathe, but I could find no joy even in loathing Guy. DNF