J by Howard Jacobson, review: 'jet-black and bleak'

Society lies broken in Howard Jacobson’s Booker-shortlisted satire, the most
unsettling novel of his career

---

steadily more serious for years, with books such as Kalooki Nights and
The Finkler Question staging their wrangling social comedies on the
edge of personal and historical cataclysms. But the jet-black satire in
J begins a long way down in the pit already. This is a novel of
absences, elisions and missing pieces, in which the reader must sift

---

village where most of the book’s action takes place, is rechristened,
if that’s the right word, Port Reuben. As a political scheme, this is
obviously daft, but it has its place in Jacobson’s bitterly satirical
agenda, representing a final scattering to the winds of special names
and cultural signifiers.

---

characters in a ridiculous world, it wants to keep the reader guessing
about the dimensions and consequences of its central atrocity, but it
needs to make sure we don’t miss any satirical, ethical or political
points either. This results in an uneven tone that can’t simply be
ascribed to the neutered language of this future society, as the author

---

which its ideas can be discussed.

READ: Zoo Time, Howard Jacobson's hilarious satire on the publishing
world