Marvin Kreitman, the luggage baron of South London, lives for sex. Or at least he lives for women. At present he loves four women - his mother, his wife Hazel, and his two daughters - and is in love with five more. Charlie Merriweather, on the other hand, nice Charlie, loves just the one woman, also called Charlie, the wife with whom he has been writing children's books and having nice sex for twenty years. Once a week the two friends meet for a Chinese lunch, contriving never quite to have the conversation they would like to have - about fidelity and womanising, and which makes you happier. Until today. It is Charlie who takes the dangerous step of asking for a piece of Marvin's disordered life, but what follows embroils them all, the wives no less than the husbands. And none of them will ever be the same again. (20021018)
Who's Sorry Now
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Howard Jacobson is widely acclaimed as a humorous writer. Who’s Sorry Now? is exceedingly funny but for all the bubbling wit, word play and satirical gibes it is infused with darkness. If his last book, the semi-autobiographical The Mighty Walzer, was Philip Roth’s Portnoy's Complaint relocated to 1950s Manchester, then this is possibly Jacobson's American Pastoral.
Who’s Sorry Now? centres on Marvin Kreitman, a middle-aged Jewish Lothario, a man with a "nostalgic affection for many of the old discredited categories of masculine swagger". He was once a promising young academic but somehow ended up following in the footsteps of his father--a curmudgeon who hawked purses at a street market in Balham. Now the owner of a thriving leather goods business, Kreitman has a wife and two grown-up children, an elegant house in south London and a string of mistresses. Each week he meets his old university friend Charlie Merriweather for a Chinese meal in Soho. Charlie is a big, puppy dog of a man, brutalised by his public schooling but seemingly (if a little soppily) devoted to his wife and family. The Merriweathers enjoy "nice sex" and write children’s books. To indulge in a vaguely pertinent culinary metaphor, Charlie is sweet to Marvin’s sour. However, on this particular day Charlie suggests that they should swap wives--so far so 70s sitcom. Before Marvin can persuade Charlie against the idea, Nyman, a muscle-toned cyclist, runs him down in the street. Nyman is the novel’s malevolent force. Following the crash, this apparent nobody, an enigmatic wannabe television star, weasels his way into their lives and triggers a series of unexpected couplings, leaving Kreitman’s daughter to enquire at one point: "Who’s doing what to whom this time?"
Jacobson examines sexual obsession and infidelity in ribald, if poignant detail. However, it is his exploration of the painful scars left by family life that make this book both riveting and, certainly at its end, disturbing. Although it is littered with wonderfully amusing barbs against the cult of personality, installation art and even backpacker yarn The Beach, there is probably more tragedy than comedy in this remarkable novel.--Travis Elborough --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Howard Jacobson is the author of six novels and four works of non-fiction. His last novel, The Mighty Walzer, won the Everyman Wodehouse Award for comic writing.
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16 of 20 people found the following review helpful
By John Self
Format:Hardcover
It's immediately easy to see why this was longlisted for the Booker and Jacobson's earlier comedy of sexual manners, No More Mister Nice Guy, wasn't - it's longer, denser, more intricate and frankly less out-and-out entertaining. The theme - an eternal for Jacobson - is similar: "men and women, women and men - it'll never work. Or will it?" The novel has two protagonists (because, even though they both have wives who play equally important parts in the book, with Jacobson it's the men who tell the tale, as always), Marvin Kreitman - "the luggage baron of South London" - and Charlie Merriweather - half of the husband-and-wife gestalt-entity children's author C.C. Merriweather (his wife is also called Charlie).
Charlie is faithful, if not uxorious - he has never slept with a woman other than his wife, but the question of what it would be like nags at him constantly. The reason it nags at him is because Kreitman (and this anomaly is never resolved in the book - Kreitman always referred to by surname, Charlie by first name, perhaps to make the one "good" and the other "bad") has five mistresses, and appears to be having the time of his life. Or is he? The two friends have never adequately discuss the relative merits of fidelity and promiscuity; indeed Charlie feels they have been spending the last twenty years avoiding the issue. And so he suggests they swap roles.
Don't get excited. It's not "Run for Your Wife!" If it's filthy sex and three-in-a-bed romps you're after, go back to No More Mister Nice Guy (which does it all, and more, hilariously and brilliantly). Who's Sorry Now?, as the title suggests, is an altogether more thoughtful piece, and the plot itself - such as it is - takes place almost in the background.... Read more ›
Charlie is faithful, if not uxorious - he has never slept with a woman other than his wife, but the question of what it would be like nags at him constantly. The reason it nags at him is because Kreitman (and this anomaly is never resolved in the book - Kreitman always referred to by surname, Charlie by first name, perhaps to make the one "good" and the other "bad") has five mistresses, and appears to be having the time of his life. Or is he? The two friends have never adequately discuss the relative merits of fidelity and promiscuity; indeed Charlie feels they have been spending the last twenty years avoiding the issue. And so he suggests they swap roles.
Don't get excited. It's not "Run for Your Wife!" If it's filthy sex and three-in-a-bed romps you're after, go back to No More Mister Nice Guy (which does it all, and more, hilariously and brilliantly). Who's Sorry Now?, as the title suggests, is an altogether more thoughtful piece, and the plot itself - such as it is - takes place almost in the background.... Read more ›
By soprano 1
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Who's Sorry Now Hard backed version. Used, but in beautiful condition and well wrapped. Will use seller again.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Scribbler
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I agree with reviewer John Self that this is not typical Jacobson and that was my main disappointment. It is full of long passages on the state of the relationship between men and women and, frankly, all the characters are pretty repulsive. Not particularly funny and that's what you expect from Jacobson, so I've had to mark it down. Not the book to start with if you want to see what a great coemdy writer he is. 'No More Mr Nice Guy' should be your first stop. Sorry, Howard, but if we want thoughtful Jewish there are plenty of writers who have already filled that market.
6 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Really disapointed, well, to be fair, I can't say I was ever excited in the first place. I nearly stopped reading the book about a quarter of the way through, it just bored me.
Lots of airy fairy prose, it seems not to have the more linear narrative I expected.
But, each to their own, you may love it!
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