Howard Jacobson (1) (1942–)

A very intellectual and elegant re-imagining Merchant of Venice. In this version, the events we know from the play have occurred and Shylock finds himself in the home of a non-religious Jew Strukowotsky (or something like that, I forget how to spell it). Shylock is more or less a household name. However, events extremely like those of Shakespeare's play happen in this version and Shylock gets to comment on the why and how his story unfolded like it did, plus he gets to advise on how he might do it differently if he was faced with the situation again. There are lots of "line dropping" (lines from the play inserted into the novel) sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly. The parallel characters all have similar names, so that makes the parallels easy. Plus, if you're Jewish, you'll probably get more out of the discussions about what it means to be a Jew or not, traditions or religions, than I did. I suspect this book is more intelligent than I could discern (mainly for the Judaism discussions), and it uses big words. The writing style is also a bit different, though I couldn't put my fingers on it. I really like this one, but its audience is definitely Shakespeare-lovers.… (mehr)

A fairly simple premise: 3 friends- 2 Jewish, 1 gentile. 2 recently widowed, one never married. The gentile wants to be a Jew, one of the Jews is an antisemite. This is discussed, sometimes to an agonizing length, for 300 pages. Much of the writing and the deep intelligence presented here are very admirable, which is why it probably won the Booker Prize, but the never-ending angst and handwringing began to wear me down about halfway through and didn’t let up. That said, I am glad I finally read it and it can finally free up space on my shelf.… (mehr)