A review by fairybookmother
J by Howard Jacobson

3.0

J took forever for me to read. FOR-EVER. Partially because I've been in a weird state of mind, but mostly because of the book itself. It's touted as dystopian fiction reminiscent of Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World, but it just falls flat. I wanted to know more of WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED. I think I got spoiled by Atwood's Maddaddam trilogy in which she does reveal the backstory to everything throughout the course of the trilogy. J just trudged on disjointedly. Had it been about one hundred pages shorter, it might have been more engaging, but there were too many offshoots of irrelevance that distracted me from the main story at hand and left me disinterested for weeks at a time. Jacobson can write, however, and there are several sections in the novel that left me rereading more for the sake of grammar and sentence structure than for the story itself.

Review copy provided by Blogging For Books for my honest opinion.