The Finkler Question
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Julian Treslove, a radio producer, and Samuel Finkler, a Jewish philosopher, have been friends since childhood and, as they enter middle age, they reminisce over their struggles with self-identity, anti-Semitism, women, love, and the past.
McMillan Palgrave
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Julian Treslove, a radio producer, and Samuel Finkler, a Jewish philosopher, have been friends since childhood and, as they enter middle age, they reminisce over their struggles with self-identity, anti-Semitism, women, love, and the past.
McMillan Palgrave
Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize
Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular former BBC radio producer, 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 lost touch with each other, or with their former teacher, Libor Sevcik.
Dining together one night at Sevcik's apartment—the two Jewish widowers and the unmarried Gentile, Treslove—the men share a sweetly painful evening, reminiscing on a time before they had loved and lost, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it. But as Treslove makes his way home, he is attacked and mugged outside a violin dealer's window. Treslove is convinced the crime was a misdirected act of anti-Semitism, and in its aftermath, his whole sense of self will ineluctably change.
The Finkler Question is a funny, furious, unflinching novel of friendship and loss, exclusion and belonging, and the wisdom and humanity of maturity.
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Add a CommentOh my I am surprised to read these negative comments about The Finkler Question :o. I think Howard Jacobson is nothing short of a poetic and comedic genius! I laughed and was inspired by his magnificent use of language on every page.
It is difficult to know how this book won the 2010 Booker. It is touted as being humourous. It is not.
Wow. Howard Jacobson won the £50,000 (US$78,989) Man Booker Prize for Fiction for The Finkler Question....seriously?!!! Seriously? Wow. The Finkler Question was pedantic, monotone, depressing drivel on being Jewish....enough already! What a waste of ink, money and my time. One sorry, boring excuse for a book. Very, very disappointing.
zzzzz....zzzzzz..umm..what? oh just more conversation about being Jewish? Yeah Howard, you wrote that 30 pages ago and again 40 pages ago...literary dribble...a great sleep aid though.
I was really looking forward to this book, but by 50 pages into it, I knew that it was curtains. What a dismal pedantic waste of effort putting this together.. Now on to something more worthwhile. How do folks write books like this.
BAH! This book is SO pretentious! The characters are all unlikeable, and the premise was just insulting. (A non Jewish man tries to discover what it means to be Jewish in the 21st century? Seriously?) Thanks Man Booker for giving me ANOTHER book that is almost impossible to finish. Skip it.
Howard Jacobsen is my new favourite author. The Finkler Question is a great read, very funny and insightful.
I didn't make it past the first 50 pages, so I am not qualified to say whether there was a plot in this book, but I must say, if there was a plotline, I never found it. The writing is good but the stream-of-consciousness style lacks tension, so there was nothing driving me to read on. In fact, it was downright tedious. If you're curious about what it means to be Jewish, you may find this book more interesting than I did.
do I ever like this book. It is so funny.
Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize. This is one of those books that is a bit of a slog to get through, but I found myself thinking about it when I wasn't reading it - and that counts for something. Very funny at times.