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Zoo Time (Paperback)
  • Zoo Time (Paperback)
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Zoo Time (Paperback)

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£16.99
Paperback 384 Pages
Published: 23/05/2013
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'Comedy is never as clever as when Howard Jacobson is on a roll and this book finds him barrelling' - Independent on Sunday

'Brilliantly composed ... crackling with Jacobson's wit, superb wordplay and boundless exuberance' - Times Literary Supplement

'Seriously funny' - Alexei Sayle, Daily Telegraph
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A sharp, witty novel from the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question

Novelist Guy Ableman is in thrall to his vivacious wife Vanessa, a strikingly beautiful red-head, contrary, highly strung and blazingly angry. The trouble is, he is no less in thrall to her alluring mother, Poppy. More like sisters than mother and daughter, they come as a pair, a blistering presence that destroys Guy's peace of mind, suggesting the wildest stories but making it impossible for him to concentrate long enough to write any of them.

Not that anyone reads Guy, anyway. Not that anyone is reading anything. Reading, Guy fears, is finished. His publisher, fearing the same, has committed suicide. His agent, like all agents, is in hiding. Vanessa, in the meantime, is writing a novel of her own. Guy doesn't expect her to finish it, or even start it, but he dreads the consequences if she does.

In flight from personal disappointment and universal despair, Guy wonders if it's time to take his love for Poppy to another level. Fiction might be dead, but desire isn't. And out of that desire he imagines squeezing one more great book.

By turns angry, elegiac and rude, Zoo Time is a novel about love - love of women, love of literature, love of laughter. It shows our funniest writer at his brilliant best.
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'All the trademark Jacobson qualities - waspish comedy, transgressive sex, wry riffs on Jewishness, prose so scintillating you might miss its underlying artistry - are here in spades *****' - The Mail on Sunday

'Once again, Jacobson shows that the true humorist is among the best kinds of novelist. His humour is neither cheap nor chirpy but addresses fundamental mysteries' - Sunday Telegraph

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 9781408831748
Number of pages: 384
Weight: 267 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm


MEDIA REVIEWS

Carries all the intimations of angst, melancholia and comedy that make Jacobson unique - Daily Telegraph

When he's at full throttle like this, few British novelists can touch him for such stirring, belligerent comedy ... Jacobson's attack on our growing philistinism proving uncomfortably persuasive - Daily Mail

Comedy is never as clever as when Howard Jacobson is on a roll and this book finds him barrelling - Independent on Sunday

Seriously funny - Alexei Sayle, Daily Telegraph

Does not fail to offer Jacobson's trademark pleasures, his wit, his energy his love of words - and some will add his self-deprecating priapic jokes to this list - New Statesmen

Brilliantly composed ... crackling with Jacobson's wit, superb wordplay and boundless exuberance - Times Literary Supplement

All the trademark Jacobson qualities - waspish comedy, transgressive sex, wry riffs on Jewishness, prose so scintillating you might miss its underlying artistry - are here in spades - The Mail on Sunday

You don't read Jacobson for a restrained and respectful delineation of what goes on between men and women; you read him for a no-holds-barred, bawdy and highly naughty glimpse into what we're all really thinking about doing to one another. And for the jokes, of which Zoo Time has plenty - Guardian Summer Reading

Once again, Jacobson shows that the true humorist is among the best kinds of novelist. His humour is neither cheap nor chirpy but addresses fundamental mysteries - Sunday Telegraph

A fiercely intelligent, fizzing piece of theatre ... An intellectually rich depiction of the animal desires that drive us, and the human feelings that elevate and sadden us ... In Guy Ableman, Jacobson has created an unforgettable narrator, a character defined by heroic flaws and tender, susceptible heart ... Magnificently eclectic in its range of targets, Zoo Time is a bestiary of bêtes noir. Few modern novelists better balance the absurd with the artistic, the priapic with the philosophical, the wicked with the wise ... a scorching indictment of an anti-intellectual age in which most readers are greedy for pap, and those who want more than a sugared bun passed to them through the bars are doomed to starve - Sunday Herald

Zoo Time is wonderfully witty, ferociously clever and assured to the point of swaggering - he's clever enough to tease his readers without taking his eyes off the road - Kate Saunders, Jewish Chronicle

There were many moments when I roared with laughter - Readers Digest

Always zestful and occasionally bang on target - Sunday Times (Ireland)

Angry, funny and profoundly pessimistic fiction - Prospect

He does have an ear in the Joycean or Tennysonian sense of writing prose that rings out, that sounds good in your head as you're reading - Literary Review

As sharp and intelligent as it is enjoyable - Stylist

Brilliant, blistering comedy, with melancholy undertones of regret for what is being lost - Kate Saunders, The Times

Ableman's every beautifully constructed comic riff is a response to his fear of not being read - Sunday Express

Jacobson fills the tale with exuberant comedy. He has a stand-up's skill for callbacks, puns and quips, which make Zoo Time a total riot - Time Out

Jacobson takes the time to craft lines that are so perfectly executed, they deserve to be read twice. Possibly even aloud, to fully appreciate the comedic value of his prose ... humour still drips off every page ... Fascinating, often hilarious - The List

Jacobson is a master of keep-up-at-the-back smart talk - Evening Standard

Buoyant comedy of gritty life, great literature and a good laugh - Iain Finlayson, Saga

It's also joyously rude about almost everything and filled with delicious invective. Just relax and go with it - it's Zoo Time - We Love This Book

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“Persevere”

This book sounded promising and Howard Jacobson has good previous form. However, I found it difficult to get into Zoo Time, the writing is dense, particularly at the start. The concept of writing about a writer who is... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 76

“Not your run of the mill book”

This is my first read of Howard Jacobsons - I have read a lot about 'The Finkler Question' but have not got around to reading it yet.

I found the book a witty read - an entirely differnt genre to the usual... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 68

“The comic novel lives”

The instructions say 'rate this book'. This is tricky. Guy Ableman, Howard Jacobson's alter ego even if the former is from Wilmslow and the latter from Manchester, wouldn't approve. The more stars... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 58

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