The Finkler Question

• Author: Howard Jacobson
• Amazon Link

This book was awarded the Mann Booker Prize for 2010. I have read many past winners of this award and until now have never been disappointed. As they say, there is always a first time and this certainly was it for me.

The premise of the book was definitely something that piqued my interest. It was about Jewish identity in the 21st century and what makes them different. The main character is Julian Treslove a single, never-married, but with a couple of kids to call his own, 49 year-old non-Jew living in London. He is obsessed with his Jewish friends and wants more than ever to be all things Jewish. This is the basic premise of the book and while it is amusing the first couple of times that it is presented, it gets really tiring and not-at-all-funny after a while. There are many attempts at humor that fall flat and what makes them all the more annoying is the fact that the author repeats these attempts over and over again. The whole thing of the ASHamed Jews is an example of this. I recommend staying as far away from this book as possible. The only useful thing I could glean from this book was the meaning of some interesting Yiddish words.