Zoo Time

September 24, 2012
Man Booker Prize-winner Jacobson (The Finkler Question) returns with this smiling meta-look at a novelist struggling to find his next book in a world where there are more writers than readers (and where, "Whatever else, fiction was fucked.") Forty-three-year-old Guy Ableman's London publisher has committed suicide, and his new one is pushing "unbooks" for smart phones. His agent dismisses all of Guy's book proposals, most of which are inspired by Guy's efforts to seduce spirited, red-headed Poppy Eisenhower, whom Guy has longed for since marrying her spirited, red-headed daughter, Vanessa. As monkey-obsessed Guy attempts to go "zoo time" with the inseparable women, he "mouth-writes" novels about his alter-ego, Gid. Acknowledging that a writer who "resorts to writing about writing" is in trouble, Guy moves on to a protagonist based on his Casanova brother Jeffrey "who drinks vodka through his eyes" and whom Guy suspects (with lamentation) is sleeping with his wife, and postulates (with rage) is sleeping with Poppy. Mentally auditioning various novel ideas throughoutâThe Monkey on My Back, The Mother-in-Law Joke, and The Monkey and the Mother-in-LawâGuy moves closer to his next book, but never (even as Poppy and Vanessa change course)âfar from himself.

September 15, 2012
Bad-boy funnyman Jacobson waxes pensive and topical--but no less mirthful--in his latest assault on the foibles of modern life. These days, grumbles Guy Ableman, "one has to apologize for having read a book, let alone for having written one." That's bad for old Guy, who's a reader and a writer, the author of smart literary fictions of very modest success who suddenly realizes that his bookish world is crumbling around him. It doesn't help that his agent commits suicide rather than negotiate yet another e-book deal or that his wife, voluptuous and wonderful, has decided that she's going to write something of her own, or that his wife's mother is sending decidedly un-mother-in-law-like vibes his way: Guy is in a bad existential state, and the world of publishing is going down the tubes with him. The obvious solution? Why, to craft an irresistible best-seller, a dumb and juicy confection that twists all the right knobs. It's a lovely setup, one that affords Jacobson, never shy about skewering modern mores, plenty of opportunities to lampoon modern trends in the litbiz. He gets in digs at just about everything, in fact; for instance, we learn, courtesy of Guy, that novels about single fatherhood sell well in Canada "because Canadian women were so bored with their husbands that the majority of them ran off sooner or later with an American or an Inuit." So fast and furious are the jibes that one wonders if Jacobson will have anything left to lampoon, but of course, the world has a way of providing targets for the careful satirist, and he's an ascended master. His latest is more fun than Lucky Jim, and if some of its tropes are more ephemeral, Jacobson is willing to take some big risks in the service of art, as when Guy muses of one of his confections, "I had to cheat a bit to get the Holocaust in, but a dream sequence will always make a chump of chronology." Guy's not a lucky guy, to be sure, but if there's justice, Jacobson will enjoy best-sellerdom in his place with this latest romp.

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May 1, 2012

Disillusioned novelist Guy Ableman is so yanked about emotionally by wife Vanessa, a blazingly difficult redhead, and her equally difficult mother that he can barely write. Caustic humor from the author of the Man Booker Prize winner of The Finkler Question.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2012
As he struggles to fashion his desire for his mother-in-law into fiction, Guy Ableman bemoans the death of the book, and no wonder. Guy's publisher wants his writers to develop story apps, English authors' clubs are promulgating information on combating constipation (an apparent analog to writer's block), and Guy's own oeuvre is going out of print, to be available only through print-on-demand. Guy's agent also disdains his proposal, despite the fact that, even in her mid-sixties, Poppy Eisenhower, mother of Guy's wife, Vanessa, seems more like her daughter's sister. Both of themtall, slender, high-breasted redheadsare indisputable head-turners. When Vanessa's perpetual threat to write a book herself turns serious, and Guy's Jewish family finds religion, his ideas for fiction make a U-turn from lasciviousness. Jacobson is a master of stylish prose with a comic bent. Here, as usual, there is an issue of gravity beneath the comedy. At a time when Borders (described as barely breathing here) is dead, and an erotic trilogy tops best-seller lists, Guy Ableman might indeed wonder about the future of the book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

September 1, 2012

Guy Ableman believes that he has one more successful novel left in him, but with a suicidal publisher and a wife devoted to her own writing, he needs just a little more attention to complete the job. If he could persuade his mother-in-law, Poppy, to visit London, he just might act on his longstanding attraction to her and stir up some literary content. But in a literary world increasingly dominated by other styles, themes, and settings, would readers be interested in Guy's love triangle anyway? Jacobson, winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize (The Finkler Question), manages to be in turn profane, ponderous, and glib--a tribute to Ableman's idol, Henry Miller? VERDICT A humorous, satiric look at modern relationships and the fragile psyche of the writer; point this one out to contemporary Brit lit fans or to those who favor the works of Woody Allen, Philip Roth, and John Updike.--Jenn B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.