J: A Novel
by Howard Jacobson
by Howard Jacobson
Paperback, 327 pages
Published: 2014
Publisher: Random House India
ISBN: 9780224102056
Blurb: Set in the future - a world where
the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about or visited - J is a
love story of incomparable strangeness, both tender and terrifying.
Two people fall in love, not yet knowing where they have come from or where they are going. Kevern doesn't know why his father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a world starting with a J. It wasn't then, and isn't now, the time or place to be asking questions. Ailinn too has grown up in the dark about who she was or where she came from. On their first date Kevern kisses the bruises under her eyes. He doesn't ask who hurt her. Brutality has grown commonplace. They aren't sure if they have fallen in love of their own accord, or whether they've been pushed into each other's arms. But who would have pushed them, and why?
Hanging over the lives of all the characters in this novel is a momentous catastrophe - a past event shrouded in suspicion, denial and apology, now referred to as What Happened, If It Happened.
J is a novel to be talked about in the same breath as Nineteen Eighty-Fourand Brave New World, thought-provoking and life-changing. It is like no other novel that Howard Jacobson has written.
Two people fall in love, not yet knowing where they have come from or where they are going. Kevern doesn't know why his father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a world starting with a J. It wasn't then, and isn't now, the time or place to be asking questions. Ailinn too has grown up in the dark about who she was or where she came from. On their first date Kevern kisses the bruises under her eyes. He doesn't ask who hurt her. Brutality has grown commonplace. They aren't sure if they have fallen in love of their own accord, or whether they've been pushed into each other's arms. But who would have pushed them, and why?
Hanging over the lives of all the characters in this novel is a momentous catastrophe - a past event shrouded in suspicion, denial and apology, now referred to as What Happened, If It Happened.
J is a novel to be talked about in the same breath as Nineteen Eighty-Fourand Brave New World, thought-provoking and life-changing. It is like no other novel that Howard Jacobson has written.
I am not much of a high-brow reader.
Sophie Kinsella and Jodi Picoult are enough to make me get titillated when I am
to pick up a new book. But this time, I wanted to read something really ‘good.’
My senses were instantly perked up when they said I could read J.
All I knew about it was that Howard
Jacobson had won the Man Booker Prize for one of his books in 2010 and that J
was long listed for the Booker this year too. It had to be awesome. Another
thing I knew about it was that it was a dystopian novel, so I was really very
interested.
J is basically a book on the
holocaust survivors and is set somewhere in the post-apocalyptic era. The
setting is something that resembles England. It could be England, but you never
know. Jacobson has put in a lot of references to German words in between, which
gives a good deal of ambiguity to the reader for the setting. The book says
that the place is Port Reuben. It is one of many renamed towns where many
rechristened people live.
Jacobson’s novel tells us of a
generation that you found find hard to identify with in this present of yours.
He tells of their terror and past that is unbelievably ghastly. The time of which Jacobson talks, nostalgia is
a taboo and even a bigger one is to seek knowledge. The world is again under
the claws of the powers like the ones we can never imagine could exist ever
again. Media is totally controlled, some events and incidents are never talked
about, and some are totally nullified by the official reports. All people are
left with the liberty of saying ‘WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED’ – the phrase
repeated multitude of times in the book.
I believe, the one who has written
the blurb was slightly mistaken. You can’t compare J to Brave New World and
1984. In a lot of places while reading
J, I found it bland. Almost a torment to continue. And things didn’t seem to
fall into place until after more than half the book is done. I was like, ‘I do
not understand a damn thing that’s going on!’
I don’t want to sound prejudiced,
but J seems to be a book typically written for the Booker-types. Tailor made
for accolades and nominations at the awards. For an average light-reader like
me, it is like climbing a rocky hill. The prose is too pompous for me, the
characters didn’t make sense, a really vague plot until half the book- there
doesn’t have to be a longer list why I didn’t quite like J. I might even have
given it up just in the first fifty pages had it not been a review copy.
For the ones who think they would
like this real ‘high brow’ thing, go for it. For the light readers, I would
give you a red sign. Stay away.
