An angry lament of a novel

Fiction: Howard Jacobson raids his Jewishness in his best book to date

Being human isn't easy - everyone knows that. But being Jewish is particularly difficult. Struggling under the weight of a culture that has been singled out for suffering throughout the ages is a burden, as is the communal agony of being Jewish - neither of which lends itself to complacency.

History has chronicled the Jewish tragedy in blood. But writers tend to see the comic side of Jewish complexities. For all the burden of the historical legacy, there is also the guilt and of course, as Woody Allen has often pointed out, that most intimidating of world powers - the Jewish mother.

Before he reinvented himself as the chronicler of his country and the chief mourner at the funeral of US national greatness, Philip Roth expended much creative energy on recording the responsibility of being a Jewish writer, a great Jewish writer, and then there was all the commotion caused by rampant sexuality, messy and compromising, but a necessary evil. It made for hysteria; at times it inspired great comedy. US Jewish writing occupies an elevated status, but the English Jews have been neither blind to its comic potential, nor unafraid of exploiting it, as Harold Pinter has ably demonstrated. Anita Brookner has written brilliant, subtle books shaded by European tones, on the subject of English Jewishness.

Manchester Jew Howard Jacobson has also made raids on his Jewishness, but never as directly as he has in Kalooki Nights. It is his best book to date. Although overly long, ambitious, and rather determined in its repetitive lamentation, there are moments of lingering insight, such as when the narrator explains: "For my heart was withered like the grass."

Max Glickman is a cartoonist specialising in histories of Jewish suffering. His private life is a mess, littered with the bad memories of ill-fated marriages that all sound the same - no doubt because each wife was merely a variation of the other. Jewish men are often drawn to gentile women who don't like Jews. Max is funny in a despairing sort of way. He is middle-aged and battle-scarred yet remains the son of a boxing champion father who died too young and a beautiful mother who lived too long and spent most of her time playing cards, hence the title.

Jacobson is clever, probably too clever to be a great novelist. On this showing, his narrative is continually overpowered by his thesis, that of the universal Jewish dilemma which goes beyond the personal. "Why - speaking of disloyalties, forsakings and acts that seemingly cannot be explained - did I forsake myself to draw cartoons," asks Max, "when I am averse by nature to caricature, ribaldry and violence? Why do I wake each day as though I am in mourning? Who or what am I in mourning for?"

Anyone reading this angry lament of a novel with its chant of "Jew, Jew, Jew" will very quickly be sufficiently informed to tell Max that he is in mourning for many people and many things. The interesting thing about Max is that he is impressively civilised and depressed. Subdued has become his natural state. There are no cheap laughs in this book, any flash of comedy is well earned. For all the humour, and it is that particularly Jewish humour of exasperation and despair, this is a serious novel. Early in the narrative, Max is recalling a business trip during which he attempted to interest "the effete mob that ran the New Yorker" in his cartoons.

Through a contact, he succeeds in having lunch with a junior editor "who, like so many New Yorkers in the arts, got his dress sense from the novels of Ivy Compton-Burnett." Over lunch, the junior editor attempts explaining to Max what made Thurber "humorous".

'Desperation', I interrupted him.

'I beg yours?'

'What made Thurber humorous was desperation. Only I don't think the word for it is humor exactly. It's not humor when you're at the end of a rope. What makes Thurber funny is that you smell death in every sentence he wrote and despair in every line he drew."

Max, as is increasingly obvious, is no comedian. He watches, listens and remembers. He also thinks and debates with himself. "Had I painted rather than cartooned, I'd have been a surrealist. Which is peculiar because I've never liked surrealism. Another argument I might have had with myself."

Throughout the book Jacobson pursues every description to the final detail. Every character is fully imagined physically but many tend to drift off psychologically.

His intensity can be slightly terrifying, such as the passage in which he considers hands. "Fascinating, the human hand, both as a piece of engineering in itself (of particular expressive value to a cartoonist) and on account of its wilfulness, the independence it enjoys from the rest of the body. And from the rest of the personality, come to that, You never know - I defy anyone to predict - what sort of hands a person is going to have."

There is a central story, that of the murder of the parents of a boyhood friend of Max's. The killer was the son, the friend and he is sent to prison. But by then, time has passed and Manny the murderer is no longer that close to Max, who admits "I didn't go to Manny's trial. Why should I have? I wasn't his friend. I was in America at the time . . ." Lives go on around Max, and they also end.

Alongside his daily experiences are references to the Holocaust and the death camp experiences of others. It is a study in being haunted by the past and also by the expectations of how exactly one should react to the past and the experiences of others.

Several of the exchanges reveal volumes, such as one heated conversation between Max and former wife Zoe - while she was still his wife -"An artist! You! Don't make me laugh, Max. If anyone's an artist in this relationship, I am. You're just a cartoonist. Which means you don't see the world at all. You only see your own sick view of it. What you do, you can just as well do blind."

Manny, through his role as the murderer is a central character by default. When he leaves prison and somewhat unexpectedly moves in with Max, he appears to exist at an almost spiritual level, and is convinced of his innocence. His only crime is to have stopped "protecting" his parents.

Despite the bluster and the big gestures, the huge statements, the emotional punch, this is an intellectualised performance. Had Jacobson articulated less, he would have expressed more, not that he hasn't said a great deal. "There are no revelations. Everything you learn, you know already."

This is a very busy, good novel, with a huge theme, that, with more authorial restraint, could have been even better. As it is, Jacobson's anger has here, for once, almost countered his natural bravado.

Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times

Kalooki Nights By Howard Jacobson Cape, 472pp. £17.99