The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

The Finkler Question is Howard Jacobson’s novel about Jewishness in its many forms. Its main character is Treslove, a hollow figure who is obsessed with tragic deaths (his own and his lovers’) and opera (particularly operas which feature scenes of lovers dying tragically). His relationship with two Jewish friends Sam Finkler (a childhood friend and successful TV philosopher) and Libor (an urbane 90-year-old mittel-European who was once Sam and Treslove’s teacher) form the backbone to the novel.

Treslove is fixated with his friends’ success and feels alienated from their passionate discussions on Israel and Jewish life. A bizarre mugging by a woman is interpreted by Treslove as an anti-Semitic event and leads him to attempt to convert to ‘Jewishness’ (not Judaism).

The novel then proceeds to present this as an impossible task: there is no monlithic 'Jewishness' that one can become. Each character is conflicted in their own sense of Jewishness: Finkler’s wife – the most observant Jew in the novel – is actually a convert; Juno, who Treslove sees as the embodiment of female Jewishness, becomes tired of endlessly making gefilte fish and discussing the Torah and just wants to be able to watch TV occasionally; Sam Finkler veers between hating and loving his identity.

Jacobson has much fun playing with/confirming/denying/satirising several Jewish stereotypes and there are lots of in-jokes for those with a working knowledge of Jewish culture/history. For example, The Finkler Question translates as The Jewish Question, which was an essay by Karl Marx that has often been interpreted as anti-Semitic. This becomes all the more relevant to Jacobson's theme of identity when you consider that Marx’s family converted out of Judaism to Christianity – there are many layers here! I also wonder what Alain de Botton thinks of the fact that Sam’s ludicrous pop philosophy books (‘The Existentialist in the Kitchen’ and ‘The Little Book of Household Stoicism’) are quite clearly modelled on his successful publications (‘How Proust can change your life’)?

Unfortunately, it may be that some will be put off by what seems to be ethnic-religious navel gazing of the most arcane sort. This would be a shame as they would be missing out on a powerful examination of male friendship (its jealousies, betrayals and admirations) and some great comic (and tragic) scenes in what is an extremely well-written novel.

My only qualms are that it does tend towards the rant in the final third (and not in the raging, compulsive, sear-the-fingers-from-the-page prose of Philip Roth – a novelist who deals with similar subject matter) , with the early potential just failing to deliver in quite the way I’d hoped.

All-in-all, this isn't my winner, but I do look forward to reading Jacobson's Kalooki Nights (which many proclaim to be his masterpiece).