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The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson: book review




The Finkler Question (2010) is set in London. Former BBC radio producer, 49-year-old Julian Treslove, is a magnet for disasters, accidents, and tragedies. Julian and two of his friends had just lost the women they loved.

Julian’s partner left him – as had all of his previous partners. Sam Finkler, a TV personality, a household name, and writer of practical self-help philosophy books, also 49, lost his wife Tyler when she died before she turned 50. Their former teacher, 90-year-old Libor Sevcik, lost his 80-year-old wife Malkie in the same month. ‘Bereavement had ironed out the differences in their ages and careers and rekindled their affection. Heartless bereavement was the reason they were seeing more of one another than they had in thirty years.’

Julian has two sons, Rodolfo and Alfredo (Ralph and Alf), to two partners, Janice and Josephine, neither of whom he married. Sam has three children: Blaise, Immanuel, and Jerome. Regarding their ‘Jewishness’ – ‘one is, one isn’t, one’s not sure.’

One evening Julian is mugged on his doorstep, robbed of his phone, pen, and money – by a woman. He does not tell the police, nor his sons. Who was this woman? Did she say ‘You Jew!’ or ‘You Ju?’ Or did she mean to target Sam (since he’s famous) in an anti-Semitic attack? Julian, was after all, a Brad Pitt and Colin Firth look-alike, so it could be a case of mistaken identity, even though Julian and Sam were not physically similar. Julian becomes obsessed in finding out why him.

The first 70% of the novel is a funny account of old age and mortality, the renewed friendship of three lonely men, Julian’s obsessive morbid humour, their legacy in their children, the loss and lust for women, and the question of their religiousity and culture, and everything Jewish, in Britain – and whether someone can be ‘a little bit Jewish.’ One funny scene is the 90-year-old Libor on the first date with a woman after the loss of his wife. The last 30% tails off somewhat, and becomes more serious and sad. Some parts are a little too repetitive and a little too neurotic and obsessive – a bit like a Woody Allen movie.


MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).



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