Cuckold comfort

So, I've finally read a novel by Howard Jacobson, the English Philip Roth, the dog's beytsim of Jewish fiction this side of New York. For some time now, his every new book has been announced by Jonathan Cape with hushed and vaguely messianic awe, along with a zealous conviction that this would be the year that he would be garlanded with critical approval and guaranteed a seat at every awards dinner.

He has, of course, been passed over by the Booker judges again this year, but I'm wary of the judgement of a panel headed by a man whose most recent media foray was a documentary which explored in hideous detail what might be the most painless way to execute someone without ever pausing to wonder if the utter barbarism of it all might just indicate it to be a futile search.

I was impressed and deeply so, but one is clearly meant to be. It is books such as this that make me wary of reviewing for the heavyweight supplements of Sunday's press.

Its conceit is that every man secretly desires that his wife take a lover and the machinations of its plot are those of Felix Quinn meddling surreptitiously in the affairs of his wife in order that she end up in the arms of the predatory voluptuary Marius.

I'm not really sure I'm able to identify to any useful extent with Felix's desire to be the cuckolded husband. I can't say I've much experience of situations analogous, but I think I know enough to say that my sexual predilections do not encompass the joy of jealousy at the thought of my partner with another. So my reaction to the scenario is necessarily dispassionate: I don't know the rules of the game.

Indeed, I think that's my feeling about the book as a whole. It drips with erudition and literary context, bandying about references to Dostoevsky and Dickens in such a knowing fashion, a fashion my paltry knowledge of the classics fails to illuminate, that I dimly suspect the whole affair might be some sort of pastiche, some sort of phantasmagorical test by Jacobson, to see who is worthy of his engagement. If so, I rather think I've failed. I admire the book and its author but no more than that.

Felix's grandfather is said to have been in Zurich at the same time as an Irish writer, who entreats him to sleep with his wife, for the mutual gratification of all concerned, an offer he seemingly accepts out of politeness before fleeing the city.

Whether that meant Joyce had to try again with someone else, or simply had to make it up, is one of those literary mysteries that no amount of reading and rereading Ulysses will solve.

Now that's wit. It's totally beyond me even to conceive of emulating him in this department, unfortunately, but better green eyes than green ink, I suppose.

It was actually quite a shock to find myself so stumped for a response after having engaged so completely with the previous book I'd read, Inside the Whale by Jennie Rooney. It's one of those debut novels which makes one impatiently excited at the prospect of having found a future star. It's narrated in alternate chapters by Stevie and Michael, whose night together before Michael is shipped out to fight in Africa results in a baby.

Traumatised by the horrors of war in general and by his accidental killing of a friend specifically, Michael stays away so long that Stevie gives him up for dead and finds another man to father her child. When he does return, they meet briefly, not knowing that each has warily observed the other in advance, but their lives have grown apart.

Michael's story is narrated from a hospice bed and in his last days he tells a nurse his story. She realises only belatedly that the woman he has mooned over is her mother. It's note perfect, full of fresh and uncontrived language and delicately shaded with historical context. Direct social commentary is not really attempted, but I feel that would have weighed the book down. It is self-contained in reflection of the isolation of its narrators, who know that the tragedy of their regret must be borne alone, not bequeathed.

Nicely enough, Jennie came into the shop to sign copies just a day or two after I read it, but I rather suspect the sight of my suddenly rising up from behind a stock trolley, whose lower reaches I happened to be sorting through when she arrived, and bounding over to her with puppy-dog enthusiasm to laud her for uncanny literary sensibilities was a little too startling to make the encounter one she'd wish to repeat.

I have a new role at the shop which takes me off the shopfloor several days a week. Unfortunately, I have been wedged into a corner of the accounts department, which means that I am subjected to a constant diet of Shite FM, or Virgin Radio as it proclaims itself to be with forceful frequency, a station so middle of the road I suspect it may be run by lollipop ladies. The Police, Queen, Oasis... oh Christ, so much Oasis. And you'd think 'Ashes to ashes' and 'Let's dance' were all Bowie had ever recorded.

And does anyone need to hear the the latest Coldplay single - I don't know what it's called and I'm determined to remain ignorant - twice an hour? This morning, when the chords of doom rang out, I went off to do a bit of shopfloor research to avoid listening to it for a third time: I came back fifteen minutes later and they were playing it again! If I wanted to hear Chris Martin bleating on incessantly, I'd be Gwyneth Paltrow and, frankly, there's very little evidence supporting that possibility.