Review: The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

I started off 2017 with a goal of reading 35 books (up 5 books from last year’s goal of 30 books). I ended up reading 38 books last year but this year I wanted to keep my goal as 35 only since I knew I would be doing a lot of new genre reading this year and didn’t want to stress myself too much over how many I could read. So with that goal in mind I picked up the “Finkler Question” as the very first book that I wanted to read this year. Random choice of book. Hadn’t even heard of it before. I had picked it up from Delhi’s Chawri Bazar and since it was a Man Book prize winner in 2010 I was sure that it would be a great read. Boy was I wrong!

The Finkler Question, written by Howard Jacobson and published in 2010 is a fictional story about three single men (two of them are widowers) and how they deal with life without their wives. It also raises the question of what it means to be a Jew in today’s world. The book is largely considered to be funny and it most certainly has its moments but where it loses readers like me is the innumerable Jewish references. Very often I found myself looking up things on the net because I had no idea what the book was referring to. Not very ideal for a reader like me who reads while traveling. The joke also loses its punch in the process.

So unless you know a lot about Jews and their customs I would most certainly steer clear of this book. There’s a lot more interesting stuff out there to read. My rating for this book is 2/5.