The Finkler Question [Paperback]

Julian Treslove is a middle aged former BBC radio producer now working as a professional look alike but quite who he looks like varies. Although never married, he has fathered two sons, neither of whom he sees regularly. Dismissed from the BBC for being too morbid on his late night Radio 3 programme, he is given to depressing levels of self-analysis in his small flat that's not quite in Hampstead. What Treslove lacks is a sense of belonging and this, he notes his Jewish friends have in spades, particularly his old school friend and rival, the best-selling philosopher and TV personality, Sam Finkler. Treslove, by contrast, always feels on the outside of life.

When the book starts Treslove is again excluded as Finkler and their mutual friend and former teacher, Libor Sevcik, an elderly Jewish Czech, have both been widowed. Although the two Jewish friends have differing political views on Zionism, Treslove sees them united in their Jewishness and their sense of mutual loss. So much does Treslove want to be like his friend Finkler, a term he uses to describe all Jewish people, and for a range of other amusing reasons, when he is attacked on the way home from Libor's flat one night, he is convinced that it is an anti-Semitic attack and that Treslove is, in fact, a Finkler himself and pursues the task of answering `The Finkler Question': what does it mean to be Jewish in the 21st century?

It's not hard to see why this book has caught the attention of this year's Man Booker judges who have short-listed it for the prize. It touches on a number of compelling subjects including middle age insecurity, male competition and friendship, death, infidelity, multiculturalism and of course religious faith and the implications of this on nation states. On top of that, it is beautifully written and often very funny both in a gentle way and at times in an angry and urgent manner. It reads very much like some of the works of the great American novelist Philip Roth, but with a more British dark humour to it, and that is high praise indeed in my book.

And yet, and yet.....

The problem I had with it is that it's a very difficult book to love because the central characters are so loathsome. The most sympathetic is the wise Libor, although arguably he is the most caricature-like of characters in the book. His story though is sad and wholly believable. Finkler himself is ambitious and craves the limelight to a detestable degree and as for Treslove, you just want to shake him into action. Given Finkler's character, I find it difficult to believe that he would have any truck with the pathetic Treslove who has taken self-analysis to a level of self-paralysis. Far from wanting to find out how his Jewish conversion was progressing, I found myself thinking more along the lines of `oi vey, he's off again. Enough with the navel gazing already'.

There's an inherent contradiction in arguing that you cannot stereotype a faith and then suggesting that this weight of self-analysis is a `Jewish thing'. Finkler himself joins a movement of ASHamed Jews, against Zionism, and yet while this is an important issue, little is made of the UN's judgements on Israel's actions.

I was left in two minds about it as a book. There's no denying the quality of the writing or the urgency of the subject, but for all the humour, the characters themselves are so dark and unlikeable, that it loses force and the net impact is a very dour read for such a book filled with so much genuine humour. How can this be? Well perhaps that's `The Finkler Question' question.

The following contains spoilers, so stop reading if you think that an element of surprise is all-important. I doubt many Booker Prize readers read books mainly to find out what happens, though.

My partner and I aren't usually Booker Prize readers, but he holds a brief for Howard Jacobson so persuaded me to try The Finkler Question. I can see where the negative reviewers are coming from. A few sections into the book, the mannered, precious style and the meandering, make-a-meal-of-everything narrative almost had us both slamming it shut in annoyance. But if you persevere, you do get into it: the style grows less obtrusive and the subject-matter more compelling as the author fires up.

He fires up mainly when exposing the hypocrisies and absurdities surrounding the whole question of Israel, and the renewed menace of anti-Semitism. These pages are coruscating, raising the suspicion that he really wanted to write a polemic about our problem with Jews, but he knew that that would get him nowhere at all with the left-leaning literary lions of London, so he disguised it as a fashionably time-looping, open-ended tragi-comedy about a limp aesthete rather like the lions themselves, and must be laughing as he watches them lap it up.

Seeing what you want to see in a book is an odd phenomenon - as in the case of all the critics who describe this book as a comic novel, just because they have some idea of Howard Jacobson being a funny writer. He is a funny writer and there is a lot of wit and some great one-liners in this book, but overall it is bleak, sad and angry, and rightly so. The avowedly funny scenes, like the account of the blog of an American Jew who is trying to restore his foreskin, seem extraneous and pretty tedious.

My main problem with the book is the central character, the wannabe Jew Julian Treslove, who, as I suggested above, seems to be a vehicle for the book rather than a character. He just doesn't add up. He is mainly presented as an aimless, rather pathetic chap, stuck in a series of dead-end jobs and always falling in love with unsuitable women, but when Jacobson wants to make use of him as `author's voice' he suddenly becomes witty, assertive, and prone to brilliant epiphanies: as when he finally realises, with merciless clarity, that his relationship with the Jewish characters consists of 'sucking at their tragedy because his own life was a farce'. But after he has learned all this wisdom as `author's voice', the author at the end of the book dumps him, as a character, right back where he started. On the other hand, the smart-arse reluctant Jew, Finkler, is allowed to end the book as a dignified representative of grief and growth, although he has never been brought to realise just what a s**t he has been, let alone done anything to make up for it. This just seems unfair. I don't mind open endings but I am old-fashioned enough to like characters to get poetic justice.

Read it, though - it stays with you.

Three elderly men, lifelong friends, meet to look back on their success and failures, their loves and losses. Two of them are Jews, the third, Julian Treslove isn't, but would like to be. What follows is an exploration of Jewishness and identity and Treslove's attempt to make sense of his life.
This book has received overwhelmingly positive reviews, and has been long-listed for the Booker. Superlatives abound. "Our greatest living writer" and other such. But I remain unconvinced. Although I accept that this is a serious and original work, the self-absorbed Treslove with his implausible identity crisis, did not engage me, and the much vaunted comedy of the book passed me by. An occasional wry smile was all I could muster. Jacobson can indeed write, and he writes well, but has some irritating stylistic quirks, such as over-use of rhetorical questions and verb less sentences that begin to grate after a while.
It is often said that if Jacobson were American, he would be rated up there with Bellow and Roth. Quite possibly, for there are many similarities, not least the obsession with all things Jewish, the misogyny (women are always described in terms of their breasts) and the lack of empathy with children (are we supposed to find it amusing that Treslove muddles up his two sons?). Above all, the self-absorption and endless wordy philosophising.
Not one for me, this novel, and I remain puzzled by the fulsome praise bestowed on it.
However - and it's quite a big however - it would make a very good book group choice as there is much to discuss here. Issues of identity, male insecurity, belonging, love and loss, and perhaps most importantly, Jewishness and what it means to be a Jew along with the thorny problems of Zionism.