Criticism: Books - Fiction
English and existential crisis
By José María Guelbenzu
Treslove guy named Julian, in his fifties, unmarried and has two children with two women different, that barely has lived and even less with their mothers, has been producing programs on the BBC and has been declining jobs in the career ladder from there, stay for a night out to dinner with some friends.
One, Libor, is an old Czech Jew, widower of a woman with whom he was married a lifetime and who longs, the other Sam Finkler, an English Jew, the Julian age, has also recently widowed. When Julian leaves the meeting and out into the street toward his house is robbed and stripped by a woman. The heist baffles him that there was a woman suspected robber and because he has beaten for being Jewish, which he is not. The fact that the robber was a woman who does nothing but obsessively remind the smallness of his life and his obvious personal and professional decline.
Finkler is a winner, a popular character; Treslove is a nobody, and Libor a man who both respected for their expertise. Treslove has imagination, a dreamer, and a real little loser. Finkler is "too high to dream" and a winner. Little by little we knew that the two widows, Libor and Finkler, each in its own way, are affected by the loss of their wives and, instead, Treslove is affected by its inability to retain their pickups. It matters little that Treslove has had a sporadic relationship with Tyler, the late wife of Finkler, he admires and envies Finkler, because this is the negative reference in life and also the image of what he has failed to be.
Jacobson, shall we say soon, is a formidable comedian. It is within the English school that has been glorious in the history of literature. The entire first part of the book, which is responsible for defining the three characters, their relationships, their attitudes towards life, their hobbies and their friendship, humor is an exercise in the best kind, a mood, moreover, that not gently hilarious but devastating. The author's wit shines at all times with uniform brightness and the reader follows the story with a smile and a considerable appreciation for their intelligence.
Sam Finkler is the self-styled leader of a Jewish association Shamed dedicated to protest the treatment that the Israelis give the Palestinians. Treslove sympathizes with them and when she meets Hephzibath, a Jewish woman it identifies with a gypsy woman who predicted that Barcelona will be a danger, began to be interested in the Jewish world in an obsessive way. Thus, the fact of the robbery, the relationship with the Jewish woman (niece of Libor), the evolution of the lives of his two friends and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict so it dislodged and is such an interest to understand and take a stand, to him, who is an expert not to take them-that his whole existence is in crisis, either because it means great with Hephzibath, either because it becomes separated from Jews Finkler Shamed, either because they support the decrepitude of Libor, or because the Jewish problem has just confusing, due to their general and specific bad conscience.
And here is where the novel, intelligently assembled and developed, entertaining and admirable the first half, it engulfs the problem of the Jews in England and with it grows smaller, is constrained to a matter of local importance and interest is far from universal. Unfortunately, because Jacobson is possibly the sharpest British comedian today.
Catalan edition: The Sam Finkler cas unique. Howard Jacobson. King James translation. Proa. Barcelona, \u200b\u200b2011. 432 pages. EUR 20.50.
The extraordinary nature of Sam Finkler
Howard Jacobson
Translation King James
Miscellaneous. Barcelona, \u200b\u200b2011
384 pages. 20 euros
eBook: EUR 9.95
Article: http://www . elpais.com 26/03/2011
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