Christopher Hart
The Old, Nowadays- They’re All the Same
The Making of Henry
By Howard Jacobson
Jonathan Cape 340pp £12.99
IN HIS LATEST novel, Howard Jacobson sounds more and more like a Jewish Kingsley Amis - which was always the direction he seemed to be going in anyway. His leading male character, Henry Nagel, generally sounds irritable rather than passionately angry - a little weary of the world, but not quite ready to admit defeat just yet - and is given to sly asides of mock-misogyny which don't entirely convince. At heart, you feel, Henry Nagel knows very well that he needs a woman in his life just as much as the next man. Oh, and of course he also gets irritated by such old dependables as the objectionable dress-sense of the young (and even worse, the would-be young), 'slobbing about in running shoes with writing on them'. Sex, death and the "eh ashes of the modern world: very Amis Sr. But what .,Jacobson has striven to add to the mix,. by, and large succeeding, are a genuine warmth and a mellower, more latitudmarian attitude towards his characters and their multiple failings, which render them considerably more endearing. Having led a largely uneventful and wholly uncommitted life for nearly sixty years, Henry Nagel one day discovers that he has inherited a swish apartment in St John's Wood. Soon after, feeling rejuvenated, he finds himself falling hopelessly in love with a beautiful, self-possessed and slightly wild fortysomething waitress at his local caf6 who goes by the name of Moira Aultbach. It is typical of Henry that he has been fantasising that her real name might be something like Margarita of Savoy. This is a man with his feet firmly in the air. He is further taken aback to realise that the caf6 itself is called Aultbach's. He has been chatting up the proprietress, not the waitress. Henry's faintly patronising attitude to women is often upset in this way.
And this time, unlike the many previous times, he feels like it's real. He can't even eat properly. 'This is how you know you're in love when you're Henry's age,' we are told. 'It feels like indigestion.' Some mornings, he and his equally late-middle-aged neighbour, Lachlan, can do no more
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
When @djbduncan notices the text for a literary jigsaw puzzle had been written by a former colleague, his head spins. A wild surmise. Are jigsaws REF-able?
Dennis Duncan - The W Factor
Dennis Duncan: The W Factor
literaryreview.co.uk
In an effort to scold drinkers, Victorian temperance societies furiously marked every drinking establishment with a red X on city maps. It was a spectacular case of propaganda backfiring.
@foxtosser explores the history of drink maps
Edward Brooke-Hitching - From Beer Street to Gin Lane
Edward Brooke-Hitching: From Beer Street to Gin Lane - Drink Maps in Victorian Britain by Kris Butler
literaryreview.co.uk
How did a workers’ insurance agent who died of tuberculosis at the age of forty become a global literary icon?
@MortenHoiJensen on Kafka's metamorphosis
Morten Høi Jensen - Paranoid Humanoid
Morten Høi Jensen: Paranoid Humanoid - Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka by Karolina Watroba; Kafka: Making o...
literaryreview.co.uk