J: A Novel
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2.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
A thought-provoking prescient novel from the Booker-prize winning author of The Finkler Question.
‘Remarkable…May well come to be seen as the dystopian British novel of its times’ Guardian
Two people fall in love, not yet knowing where they have come from or where they are going.
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 their lives is a momentous catastrophe – a past event shrouded in suspicion, denial and apology, now referred to as What Happened, If It Happened.
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.
Shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize, the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize and Longlisted for the JQ Wingate Literary Prize.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
British novelist Howard Jacobson imagines a future world throttled by unspoken atrocities and rampant paranoia. Falling in love against this backdrop is an impossible business, as the traumatised protagonists of the Man Booker–nominated J: A Novel inevitably discover. Jacobson—who won the prestigious prize in 2010 for The Finkler Question—softens the blow of his startling and disturbing dystopian novel with his trademark humour and tenderly observed human interactions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jacobson' Booker prize shortlisted dystopian novel is a pastoralist's 1984. Set in a quiet village after a global cataclysm referred to only as WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED the novel is initially as much concerned about the eccentrics down at the pub as it is with explaining what befell humankind. It slowly emerges that generations previously, a global movement named Project Ishmael persuaded the survivors to rename themselves, as well as all of the world's places, in order to obliterate all memory of the apocalypse that nearly destroyed civilization. Esme Nussbaum, formerly an analyst with the mysterious Ofnow organization (charged with monitoring public mood), has moved to the village after a near-fatal accident, and befriended Ailinn Solomons, an orphan with no memories of her past. Esme maneuvers Ailinn into a relationship with Kevern Cohen, a local woodcarver who cannot utter the letter J without putting two fingers to his lips. Kevern and Ailinn fall in love, which suits Esme's mysterious reasons for bringing them together. When a woman from the village is found murdered, and Kevern becomes a suspect, this handful of individuals become a proxy for urgent global concerns. Jacobson's (The Finkler Question) fusion of village comedy and dystopian sci-fi is a tour de force, although in many ways the story Jacobson doesn't tell is more interesting than the one he does. The chilling sketch that finally coheres about the fate that has befallen humanity may make readers lament not having had a more straightforward approach. Nonetheless, fans of dystopian fiction will find this to be a unique entry in the genre.
Customer Reviews
Not an enjoyable read
I'm disappointed to find this book made the short list for the Booker prize. It is a dense read, it doesn't flow, and seems horribly cliched. I'm not quite sure what the writer intended with this work - I found it an ungainly example of the horrors of anti-semitism.