Howard Jacobson - Shylock Is My Name

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent book

I thought this was excellent.  I approached it with a little trepidation because I'm not that keen on the idea of re-working Shakespeare and I haven't always got on with Howard Jacobson's work in the past, but I found Shylock Is My Name thoughtful, funny, profound and very readable.

This is only partially a modern re-working of The Merchant Of Venice.  Certainly many of the familiar characters and scenes from the play are represented here with real wit and a shrewd sideways take on modern life.  The book is set in Cheshire's Golden Triangle where footballers, daytime TV presenters and other very rich people live in large, expensive houses.  The Portia character, Pluribelle, hosts a daytime TV show which is a sort of Jeremy Kyle equivalent in which she arbitrates between bickering people, and the choosing of the caskets, for example, is done with a Porsche, a Mercedes and a VW Beetle.   And very funny it is, too.  The pound of flesh is here changed to a foreskin removed by circumcision, which given that attitudes to Jews is one of the central themes of the play, takes on added significance.  Jacobson does all of this and makes plenty of other references to the play with real wit and erudition, I think. 

However, the book opens with its protagonist, Simon Strulovich, meeting the real Shylock from the play and inviting him home.  The interaction between the two allows Jacobson to go beyond just retelling the story and it becomes a sort of riff on the themes of the play and an intelligent, insightful analysis of important ideas – in particular the nature of bigotry and the effect it has on all concerned.  Because this is The Merchant, the bigotry here is anti-Semitism, but Jacobson has important things to say about the way in which bigotry works in a wider sense.  We see the naked, name-calling and spitting race-hatred of the play compared to modern, more subtle forms of prejudice.  We also see the way in which the prejudiced may genuinely believe themselves to be free of prejudice, how prejudice may be perceived even when it is wholly absent and what an unholy mess this can create.  The climax to the book is quite brilliant and extremely moving as Shylock gives two exceptionally powerful speeches which will linger with me for a long, long time.  (I won't reveal more because I think knowing more would spoil the effect.)

There are some very good jokes and some great digs at the fatuities of modern life, like endless cosmetic surgery or pretentious, meaningless psychobabble – for example, "He felt suddenly very weary. Compound words ending in centric had that effect on him."  There are also some very affecting moments of real emotion.  I found the whole thing a pleasure both for its thought-provoking content and as a gripping read.  It's a very good book indeed and I can recommend it very warmly.

(I received a free ARC via Netgalley.)