jJ: A novel by Harold Jacobson is a 2014 Booker Prize Finalist. It’s a novel about something that may or may have not happened.  It’s a novel with characters named Edward Phineas Zermansky, Kevern “Coco” Cohen, Ailinn Solomoms, and Densdell Kroplik to name a few. It’s also a novel you won’t forget for a very long time.
Booker Prize nominated novels usually fall in camps of you either love them or you scratch your head wondering what the judges were thinking when they made that year’s selection. This year is also first year where The Booker Prize has been opened up to the world of writers that write in English. So for J to make the final five is really saying something and J certainly has something to say and it wants to say it a way that will make readers fall into that love or hate camp that I talked about earlier.
Anyway the novel’s main characters are Kevern and Ailinn. They are an odd pair who seem to be on a path with destiny. The question that reader ponders through the novel is their relationship preordained or not. Is someone pulling the strings or is it just love? The answer to this question is the journey of this strange but compelling novel.
Most of the characters in this novel live in a town called Port Reuben that seems to be filled with people who have secret histories. There are also books and letters from the past that slowly are uncovered throughout the novel that tell the story of what may or may not have happened to the citizens of the world.
By now you’re probably saying from this review what the heck is this novel about. Is it a metaphor for something? Mr. Jacobson seems to be interested in exploring the themes of identity in J. The letter J is crossed out in the entire novel. The character Kevern was always told never to utter the letter. Kevern is also a fastidious clean person who also has to double check to make sure all his windows and locks are closed so nobody can get in as well as not have anything moved in his house especially his rugs.
My take is Mr. Jacobson is talking about the Jewish identity and the fear of it being lost in the world. This may not be everybody’s take on it. Some may view it as something entirely different but that is what makes J such an exciting novel. It’s never dull and always has the reader turning the pages. It ask us to look ourselves and who we are and our place in the world. Should we do anything to keep our identity or is it something that can fade into the past without meaning? These profound questions make J unforgettable.