Howard Jacobson won critical fame with The Finkler Question, a highly cerebral satire on anti-Semitism, which won the Man Booker Prize. But like some other brilliant writers adored by critics he is often found guilty of being abstruse and too fond of verbiage by middle-brow readers.

His latest novel J won over the critics again and was shortlisted for Man Booker Prize. It is claimed in the blurb that this book is unlike others Jacobson has written and I’m pleased to say that this assessment is not far from the truth. J

acobson masterfully presents his quintessential humour and recurrent motif of Jewishness in a book that is not only more serious than his other books but also has a much wider scope.

J is set in an unspecified future in an unnamed country that could be England — a post-apocalyptic world that has nothing in common with the plethora of post-apocalyptic literature spewed, generation after generation, by many writers and thinkers. Jacobson deliberately refuses to reveal the trigger event that ushered the world into the present where nostalgia for the past is considered the greatest crime, and people are expected to apologise incessantly for whatever may have happened. The authorities’ fear of the past is evident from that fact that “history books were hard to come by, that diaries were hidden or destroyed and that libraries put gentle obstacles in the way of research”.

We only know that there was a sudden outbreak of mass violence, a catastrophe referred to as “what happened, if it happened” in the book. The world that Jacobson presents is all the more disconcerting because it is slightly different from our present, but the few minor details that set it apart are symptomatic of collective amnesia. Only local telephone calls are permitted because it is believed that social media played a huge role in inciting violence when “what happened, if it happened” took place. In this world, art has been reduced to landscape painting; literature to romance and memoirs of material success; music to love ballads; and above of all, people are incapable of understanding simple witticism and humour.

Although the blurb leads us to believe that J is a post-apocalyptic novel, it would be better to call it a post-Holocaust work of fiction. However, it is only indirectly hinted that “what happened, if it happened” may have been a kind of second holocaust after which everything changed. The authorities are so scared of the possibility of another such event that they eliminate everything — including relations with the rest of the world — that they believe could incite hatred and violence.

J discusses in detail themes of collective guilt and amnesia. Mentioning the distant past is as much of a taboo as discussing “what happened, if it happened”; differences of culture race and religion have apparently been eradicated to anesthetise any guilt or responsibility for past mass violence, and replaced by an apparently harmonious society. However, there is an unmistakable streak of violence and inherent frustration in the people which results in frequent sexual assaults by both genders, and other such overlooked incidents. At the basic level, J is a love story, of sorts. When Kevern Cohen and Ailinn Solomons are introduced by a stranger they both embark on a journey of self-discovery. They have their own share of odd behaviours and habits. For instance, Kevern is obsessed with the idea of anyone trespassing on his property so much that he follows an obsessive compulsive routine of rituals when leaving and entering his house to make sure no one pokes around when he is away; Ailinn, meanwhile, is haunted by the idea that there’s an Ahab hunting her, therefore, she can never let her guard down.

Peculiarly, both of them do not know any precise reason for this and who exactly would want to hurt them. Kevern lives alone in a village with a coastline; his parents, who are long dead, moved here from an unknown place, and raised him to never trust anyone. His father taught him to “put two fingers across his mouth” whenever he uttered a word which started with the letter ‘j’, “to stifle the letter j before it left his lips”. Ailinn, on the other hand, was raised by foster parents and never knew her biological parents. As the two of them become intimate, a married woman is gruesomely murdered along with her lover. Who committed this murder and what is the significance of Kevern and Ailinn’s past and their love in the backdrop of “what happened, if it happened”? The answers, let me assure you, won’t disappoint you.

Kevern and Ailinn’s romance is most unusual but rather charming, and I particularly enjoyed their frequent tête-à-tête. But the plot seems to drag in the middle, and a fairly important character is introduced quite late in the book. Thankfully, Jacobson has not only toned down his excessive word puns, he has made his usually highbrow witticism more accessible. If you were a little disappointed with Jacobson’s previous works but didn’t give up on him, J would be perfect place to start again.

“Falling in love was something he did from time to time, but he was never able to stay in love or keep a woman in love with him. Nothing dramatic happened. There were no clifftop fallings-out. Compared to the violence with which other couples publicly shredded one another in Port Reuben, his courtships — for they were rarely more than that — came to an end with exemplary courtesy on both sides. They dissolved, that was the best way of putting it, they gradually came apart like a cardboard box that had been left out in the rain. Just occa-sionally a woman told him he was too serious, hard-going, intense, detached, and maybe a bit prickly. And then shook his hand. He recognised prickly. He was spiny, like a hedgehog, yes. The latest casualty of this spininess was an embryo-affair that had given greater promise than usual of relieving the lonely tedium of his life, and perhaps even bringing him some content. Ailinn Solomons was a wild-haired, quiveringly delicate beauty with a fluttering heart from a northern island village more remote and rugged even than Port Reuben. She had come south with an older companion whom Kevern took to be her aunt, the latter having been left a property in a wet but paradisal valley called, felicitously, Paradise Valley.”

— Excerpt from the book

J
(NOVEL)
By Howard Jacobson
Jonathan Cape, UK
ISBN 978-0553419559
352pp.