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A review by jennjuniper
The Act of Love by Howard Jacobson
4.0
This is a little bit of a difficult book to review, as it's one that explores the idea of collective guilt and collective forgetting, and therefore to mention even the most basic details of the plot would be to end up changing the way that you approach and read it. Jacobson has created a thoughtful and unsettling near future in J, one where a terrible event that changed everything is being atoned for by everyone - if they're even willing to accept that it happened at all. What is known and not known, and acknowledged and not acknowledged is a theme running through the novel, and while it takes a bit of work for the reader to finally piece everything together, as J heads for its quiet but deeply disturbing conclusion, it's worth it for the unfurling of the chilly realisations as the truth comes out.
I've never read a Howard Jacobson before, I will admit, but I'm a fan of dystopian fiction and decided that this might be an interesting place to start. Despite initially struggling a little with the lack of explanations at the beginning of J, the gorgeous, witty writing carried me through, and his intimately, brutally drawn characters kept me reading. For all that its subject matter is increasingly ugly, J is a beautifully written book, rich and evocative in its language. J is more a series of vignettes linked together, past and present interwoven with letters and government reports and shared memories, little pieces of a dark jigsaw puzzle that nobody wants to recall.
I absolutely loved the two main characters, Kevern and Ailinn; their awkwardly unfolding love affair felt realistically brittle and plausible, and I found myself rooting for them in this increasingly dark and tangled world. Jacobson pulls no punches, and it is Kevern and Ailinn who pull the reader through, providing a human heart for the rest of the novel to build around.
Part dystopian fiction, part love story, part murder mystery, part uncomfortable statement on today's current affairs, J is a haunting, unsettling novel that takes a long hard look at humanity.
I've never read a Howard Jacobson before, I will admit, but I'm a fan of dystopian fiction and decided that this might be an interesting place to start. Despite initially struggling a little with the lack of explanations at the beginning of J, the gorgeous, witty writing carried me through, and his intimately, brutally drawn characters kept me reading. For all that its subject matter is increasingly ugly, J is a beautifully written book, rich and evocative in its language. J is more a series of vignettes linked together, past and present interwoven with letters and government reports and shared memories, little pieces of a dark jigsaw puzzle that nobody wants to recall.
I absolutely loved the two main characters, Kevern and Ailinn; their awkwardly unfolding love affair felt realistically brittle and plausible, and I found myself rooting for them in this increasingly dark and tangled world. Jacobson pulls no punches, and it is Kevern and Ailinn who pull the reader through, providing a human heart for the rest of the novel to build around.
Part dystopian fiction, part love story, part murder mystery, part uncomfortable statement on today's current affairs, J is a haunting, unsettling novel that takes a long hard look at humanity.