Summary and Reviews of The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

Media Reviews

Daily Beast The Finkler Question, a clever, canny, textured, subtle, and humane novel exploring the friendship of three ageing male friends…is a work of greatness… Although The Finkler Question is by no means a straightforward comic novel, it once again demonstrates Jacobson’s mastery of the form… Jacobson’s capacity to explore the minutiae of the human condition while attending to the metaphysics of human existence is without contemporary peer.

David Sax, NPR The Finkler Question tackles an uncomfortable issue [Jewish identity] with satire that is so biting, so pointed, that it pulls you along for 300 pages and leaves a battlefield of sacred cows in its wake… Like all great Jewish art… it is Jacobson’s use of the Jewish experience to explain the greater human one that sets it apart…It’s a must read, no matter what your background.

Eric Herschthal, Jewish Week Full of caustic moments … that are also, essentially, funny … No matter the book’s themes, the way Jacobson weds humor to seriousness makes it affecting for anyone.

Janet Maslin, The New York Times Mr. Jacobson doesn't just summon [Philip] Roth; he summons Roth at Roth's best. This prizewinning book is a riotous morass of jokes and worries about Jewish identity, though it is by no means too myopic to be enjoyed by the wider world. It helps that Mr. Jacobson's comic sensibility suggests Woody Allen's, that his powers of cultural observation are so keen, and that influences as surprising as Lewis Carroll shape this book.

Ron Charles, Washington Post The Finkler Question is often awfully funny, even while it roars its witty rage at the relentless, ever-fracturing insanity of anti-Semitism, which threatens to drive its victims a little crazy, too. This is, after all, a comedy that begins and ends in grief.

Adam Lively, Sunday Times (UK) There are some great riffs and skits in The Finkler Question … But at the heart of the book is Julian the wannabe Jew, a wonderful comic creation precisely because he is so tragically touching in his haplessness. The most moving (and funniest) scenes are those in which he and Libor, the widower with nothing more to live for, ruminate on love and Jewishness.

Alex Clark, Guardian (UK) A terrifying and ambitious novel, full of dangerous shallows and dark, deep water. It takes in the mysteries of male friendship, the relentlessness of grief and the lure of emotional parasitism.

Bryan Cheyette, Independent (UK) The Finkler Question balances precariously a bleak moralizing with life-affirming humor.

Christian House, Independent on Sunday (UK)

This charming novel follows many paths of enquiry, not least the present state of Jewish identity in Britain and how it integrates with the Gentile population. Equally important is its exploration of how men share friendship. All of which is played out with Jacobson’s exceptionally funny riffs and happy-sad refrains … Jacobson’s prose is a seamless roll of blissfully melancholic interludes. Almost every page has a quotable, memorable line.

Edward Docx, Observer (UK)

It is tempting - after reading something as fine as The Finkler Question - not to bother reviewing it in any meaningful sense but simply to urge you to put down this paper and go and buy as many copies as you can carry … Full of wit, warmth, intelligence, human feeling and understanding. It is also beautifully written … Indeed, there’s so much that is first rate in the manner of Jacobson’s delivery that I could write all day on his deployment of language without once mentioning what the book is about.

James Walton, Sunday Telegraph (UK)

For some writers a thorough investigation of the situation of British Jews today might do as the subject for a single book. In The Finkler Question it’s combined with his characteristically unsparing - but not unkindly - ruminations on love, aging, death and grief. He also manages his customary - but not easy - trick of fusing all of the above with genuine comedy … No wonder that, as with most of Jacobson’s novels, you finish The Finkler Question feeling both faintly exhausted and richly entertained.

Leo Robson, New Statesman

The Finkler Question is characterized by [Jacobson’s] structuring skill and unsimplifying intelligence - this time picking through the connections and differences, hardly unremarked but given fresh treatment here, between vicariousness and parasitism, and between Jewishness, Judaism and Zionism.

Matthew Syed, Times (UK)

Another masterpiece … The Finkler Question is further proof, if any was needed, of Jacobson’s mastery of humor. But above all it is a testament to his ability to describe - perhaps it would be better to say inhabit - the personal and moral worlds of his disparate characters.

Tom Adair, Scotsman

Howard Jacobson’s latest holler from the halls of comic genius … The opening chapters of this novel boast some of the wittiest, most poignant and sharply intelligent comic prose in the English language … Jacobson’s brilliance thrives on the risk of riding death to a photo-finish, of writing for broke. Exhilaration all the way.

enry Hitchings, Financial Times

Both an entertaining novel and a humane one.

Gerald Jacobs, Telegraph (UK)

Howard Jacobson [is] a writer able to recognize the humor in almost any situation and a man as expansive as most on the nature of Jewishness.

Jonathan Beckman, Literary Review (UK)

Jacobson writes perceptively about how durable friendships are compounded, in large part, of envy, schadenfreude and betrayal.

Ross Gilfillan, Daily Mail (UK)

[A] bleakly funny meditation on loss, belonging and personal identity.

Barnes & Noble Review

Rare is a work of fiction that takes on the most controversial issues facing Jews so directly—and with enough humor, intelligence, and insight—that it changes a reader’s mind or two. Be warned: The Finkler Question will probably distress you on its way to disarming you. Can we pay a novel any greater compliment?

Kirkus Review

Starred Review. At turns a romp and a disquisition worthy of Maimonides; elegantly written throughout, and with plenty of punchlines too.

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Jacobson’s prose is effortless - witty when it needs to be, heartbreaking where it counts - and the Jewish question becomes a metaphor without ever being overdone.