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Title: The Finkler Question

Author: Howard Jacobson

Narrator: Steven Crossley

Format: Unabridged

Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-15-10

Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks

Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 136 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

Man Booker Prize, Fiction, 2010

Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick. Now all three are recently widowed, in their own way, and spend sweetly painful evenings together reminiscing. Until an unexpected violent attack brings everything they thought they knew into question.

Editorial Reviews:

This Booker Prize-winning novel doesnt cover a lot of thematic ground; like Jane Austen, Howard Jacobson likes to explore a narrow field of study. In his case, it is the UKs Jewish population especially as focussed around north London. But also like Austen, Jacobsons miniaturist observations can illuminate and touch on universal questions, and has room for multi-layered comedy.

Julian Treslove is an unspectacular television producer of arts programs and a celebrity impersonator, with two failed marriages behind him and two distant, resentful sons. A gentile convinced that a Jewish identity would offer asylum from his identity crisis, Treslove is acutely envious of his old school friend Sam Finkler, now a highly successful author of glib pop-philosophy best sellers with titles like The Existentialist in the Kitchen. For Treslove, Finkler comes to represent Jewish identity: The Jewish question (in all its loaded historical ambivalence) becomes the Finkler question, at once sanitized and personalized. Both men regularly meet with their former teacher, Libor Sevcik, a colorful Mittel-European transplant who serves as the books heart (as well as narrator Steven Crossleys finest achievement). He is crotchety, funny, and touching in his devotion to his dead wife, even while on hilariously awkward dates.

Jacobson has great fun in pitting his characters different approaches to Jewishness against each other, particularly Tresloves gauche appropriation (He looked like Topol; thats how Treslove knew he was a Jew.). There is a sense that the three male leads are facets of one personality with a schismatic approach to Jewishness: Crossley, however, is able to give each one their own unique voice. In fact, with The Finkler Question, Crossley gives a masterclass in narration. His characterizations are colorful without lapsing into caricature, and he unfailingly gets the intent behind each line, each rhetorical question, each instance of passive-aggressive indignation (and theres a lot of that). Especially with this book, the narrator has an important task: the physical attack that kicks off Tresloves identity crisis hinges on a linguistic confusion, and Crossleys obsessive delivery of each permutation of the attackers garbled words is just one very funny moment in an excellent performance.

Members Reviews:

Funny, touching, thoughtful

Wonderful book, brimming with challenging and fascinating characters. Jacobson provides the sparkling words---ironic, true, funny, depressing, illuminating. All of the characters are flawed humans, all receive the author's empathy. Crossley captures each of the characters brilliantly, even the women (and such wonderful women, from the departed Melkie to the serious and humane Hepzibah). Whether precocious child, snarling teen, or ancient Czech, Crossley finds their essence.