The Finkler Question: A Novel

Howard Jacobson

Sep 2010 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

About this ebook

"He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one..."

Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular and disappointed BBC worker, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick, a Czechoslovakian always more concerned with the wider world than with exam results.

Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and with Treslove, his chequered and unsuccessful record with women rendering him an honorary third widower, they dine at Libor's grand, central London apartment.

It's a sweetly painful evening of reminiscence in which all three remove themselves to a time before they had loved and lost; a time before they had fathered children, before the devastation of separations, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it. Better, perhaps, to go through life without knowing happiness at all because that way you had less to mourn? Treslove finds he has tears enough for the unbearable sadness of both his friends' losses.

And it's that very evening, at exactly 11:30pm, as Treslove hesitates a moment outside the window of the oldest violin dealer in the country as he walks home, that he is attacked. After this, his whole sense of who and what he is will slowly and ineluctably change.

The Finkler Question is a scorching story of exclusion and belonging, justice and love, ageing, wisdom and humanity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best.

Ratings and reviews

The Finkler Question is not an easy book to read. It requires careful reading and a conscious effort not to rush to judgment about its content, message and value. In subtle and not so subtle ways, it exposes the underbelly of every anti-Semitic stereotype and incident, on G-d's earth. At times I felt as if I was looking at the world of Jews through an amusement park "fun house" mirror. I often asked myself as I read it, is this book a good thing or a bad one, for Jews. Is the picture it presents of the worst side of Jewish personalities, culture and history, one we would like to have illuminated or would we perhaps like our achievements to be highlighted instead? In fairness, the warmth, passion, exuberance and colorful quality of Judaism is often illustrated, as well, but they often feel overshadowed by the oppressive nature of the negative images presented. Through the eyes and exploration of the backgrounds, relationships, friendships and love lives of three friends, Libor, Finkler, and Treslove, two Jews and one gentile, what it means to be Jewish once, now and perhaps forever, is thoroughly explored. The voice of the story is Julian Treslove, the non-Jew. He refers to all Jews as Finklers...it is his code word for Jews, identifying them with his friend Sam Finkler, an "ASHamed" Jew who does not wish to be identified as a "Jew" but rather identified with the "others". Libor is a traditional Jew, an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, perhaps the quintessential Jew. It is not a stretch to transpose the book's title into "The Jewish Question". Treslove appears to be a hapless man, a man whose face is not distinguishable, whose face assumes that of others easily, and therefore, not ambitious, his choice of career is to play the role of an actor's double. It suits his personality, since like his face, he too is a blank slate onto which the roles of others is easily transplanted. He seeks to be something "other" than he is and so he engages in many unsuccessful relationships in his search for his identity and his idea of "otherness". From the outset, it is obvious that Treslove is not a contented man. He always seems to be walking around with a cloud above his head like the L'l Abner character, Joe Btfsplk. Perhaps, as he aspires to find Jewish roots or to identify with Jews, he could also be considered Job-like, since all of his endeavors somehow have a negative outcome, no matter how well-intentioned he seems to be. This book leaves you with many questions. Does this book reinforce negative Jewish stereotypes or simply expose them for what they are? Is it an accurate picture of what a Jew is? Are Jews tired of “remembering” and “never forgetting” their past? The book, published in 2010, is oddly prophetic, as with the referral to Obama and his policies about the settlements, which is a current controversy at this very moment. For me, one of the most profound insights of the book occurred on page 230. These phrases summed it all up for me. Was this perhaps the "tongue in cheek" message of the book. After all, it is written by a Jew. "A thinking Jew attacking Jews, was a prize. People paid to hear that." Could that also be one of the reasons for the book's popular reception in the literary world or was its fame largely due to its literary excellence? It is food for further thought.

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About the author

An award-winning writer and broadcaster, Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester, brought up in Prestwich and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield, and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied under F. R. Leavis. He lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His novels include The Mighty Walzer (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Kalooki Nights (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize) and, most recently, the highly acclaimed The Act of Love. Howard Jacobson lives in London.