Howl by Howard Jacobson review – a tragicomic portrait of a Jewish man’s despair

Howl by Howard Jacobson review – a tragicomic portrait of a Jewish man’s despair

A suburban headteacher navigates antisemitism in Gaza-outraged London in Jacobson’s latest novel Howard Jacobson writes characters at their wits’ end; those characters are usually men, and those men are usually Jewish. Additionally, and problematically for both them and everyone around them, their collective wits are capacious: easily enlarged to allow idiosyncrasy to bloom into neurosis, preoccupation into obsession. And Jacobson’s men do the opposite of suffering in silence (although they d...

By Alex Clark