This bitterly funny observation of the terror and humiliations of falling in love in old age shows Jacobson on fine form Howard Jacobson’s new novel is billed as an exploration of finding love in old age, which is sort of true, but only in the way that giraffes have sticky-out ears; factually correct but hardly the first thing you notice about them. Before a reader dwells on the slowly developing relationship between nonagenarian Beryl Dusinbery and the somewhat younger but no spring chicken Shimi Carmelli, they might find their eye drawn elsewhere. To the psychological fate of the young Shimi, for example, caught trying on his mother’s bloomers and thereafter consigned to “boy-hell – the Cave of All Humiliations where bed-wetters and fledgling masturbators sit with their heads in their hands while grinning devils in caps and bells roar ridicule in their ears” (it’s worth reading that fragment aloud to appreciate its rhythmic implacability). Or, perhaps, to the bloodlust implied by Beryl’s naming of two of her sons, who have grown up to be politicians in opposing camps: one is called Pen, short for Pentheus, torn apart by his mother in Greek myth; and the other Sandy, “as must be no less obvious, being short for Tisander who was murdered by Medea”. She is fond of neither, unsurprisingly. Continue reading...
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