I wanted to read this book because 1) I tend to agree with the sensibilities of the Man Booker Prize judges, and 2) I have an abiding interest in the Finkler Question and suppose I was looking for the Finkler Answer.
There's a scene early in this book where school chums are discussing one's visit to a fortune teller. The gypsy had told Treslove that a mysterious woman named Juno would enter his life at some point. Treslove asks Finkler if he knows a Juno.
"J'you know Juno?" Finkler replied, making inexplicable J noises between his teeth.
Treslove didn't get it.
"J'know Juno? Is that what you're asking me?"
Treslove still didn't get it. So Finkler wrote it down. D'Jew know Jewno?
Treslove shrugged. "Is that supposed to be funny?"
"It is to me." Finkler said. "But please yourself."
"Is it funny for a Jew to write the word Jew? Is that what's funny?"
"Forget it," Finkler said. "You wouldn't understand."And as much as I wanted to love this book, perhaps, like Treslove the token goy, I just didn't understand it. As timely as today was this editorial in the paper I read.
Judaism, Zionism, Anti-Zionism, Anti-Semitism-- it's there around us every day. Here in Canada there are Israel Apartheid Weeks at the major universities, Queers Against Israel Apartheid march in Toronto's Gay Pride Parade, CUPE muses about organizing boycotts against all goods made in occupied territories-- and it's an issue that I feel I never get to fully formed ideas about. After the Holocaust (not just the atrocities that happened in Europe but also countries like Canada refusing boatloads of Jewish refugees at the time), I can't imagine the thought processes of anyone who would deny the Jewish people a right to their own homeland, as safe harbour if nothing else. I also would agree that the Palestinian people deserve and requiretheir own homeland, that they should have the same rights to peace and hope and confidence in the future that we enjoy here. In The Finkler Question, Howard Jacobson puts all imaginable viewpoints regarding the Middle East Situation in the mouths of his characters, but I ended the book without a greater understanding; I had only heard the arguments rehashed without any conclusions drawn.
There are certainly funny bits in this book. This is probably my favourite:
(He passed) Nash's church where he had once fallen in love with a woman he had watched lighting a candle and crossing herself. In grief, he presumed. In chiaroscuro. Crepuscular, like the light. Or like himself. Inconsolable. So he'd consoled her.
"It'll be all right," he told her. "I'll protect you."
She had fine cheekbones and almost transparent skin. You could see the light through her.
After a fortnight of intense consolation, she asked him, "Why do you keep telling me it will be all right? There isn't anything wrong."
He shook his head. "I saw you lighting a candle. Come here."
"I like candles. They're pretty."
He ran his hands through her hair. "You like their flicker. You like their transience. I understand."
"There's something you should know about me," she said. "I'm a bit of an arsonist. Not serious. I wasn't going to burn down the church. But I am turned on by flame."
He laughed and kissed her face. "Hush," he said. "Hush, my love."
In the morning he woke to twin realisations. The first was that she had left him. The second was that his sheets were on fire.And this muscular bit of scene-setting:
In Treslove's eyes Hephzibah didn't so much cook as lash out at her ingredients, goading and infuriating them into taste. No matter what she was preparing she always had at least five pans on the go, each of them big enough to boil a cat in. Steam rose from four of them. Burning oil from a fifth. Every window was open. An extractor fan sucked noisily at whatever it could find. Treslove had suggested closing the windows when the fan was on…But Hephzibah ignored him, banging her cupboard doors open and closed, using every spoon and every casserole she owned, breathing in the flames and the smoke. The sweat poured down her brow and stained her clothes. Every couple of minutes she would pause to wipe her eyes. Then on she'd go, like Vulcan stoking the fires of Etna. And at the end of it, there was an omelette and chives for Treslove's supper.There are many examples of persuasive and well-formed arguments for and against the actions that Israel takes, and although I am open to being educated on the issue, I was left, like Treslove, feeling like an outsider who couldn't possibly understand an issue I wasn't born into. It's like when someone says, "My mother is nuts!", and you reply, "You're right. Your mother is nuts!", and they sock you in the jaw for talking smack about their mother. It's like Jaobson is saying that the Finkler Question can only be understood and answered by the Finklers themselves, and if this is the point of this book, then that feels like a bit of a copout.
From a purely narrative point of view, The Finkler Question is a slightly frustrating story, with mostly unlikeable characters, but the writing is strong and compelling and carried me through to the end. A Man Booker winner? Mazel tov.
