J Reading Guide
Synopsis Set in the future – a world where the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about or visited – J is a love story of incomparable strangeness, both tender and terrifying. Two people fall in love, not yet knowing where they have come from or where they are going. Kevern doesn’t know why his father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a world starting with a J. It wasn’t then, and isn’t now, the time or place to be asking questions. Ailinn too has grown up in the dark about who she was or where she came from. On their first date Kevern kisses the bruises under her eyes. He doesn’t ask who hurt her. Brutality has grown commonplace. They aren’t sure if they have fallen in love of their own accord, or whether they’ve been pushed into each other’s arms. But who would have pushed them, and why? Hanging over the lives of all the characters in this novel is a momentous catastrophe – a past event shrouded in suspicion, denial and apology, now referred to as WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED.
Author biography An award-winning writer and broadcaster, Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester in 1942, brought up in Prestwich and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield, and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied under F. R. Leavis. He lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge. Howard Jacobson now lives in London.
Cast of main characters Kevern ‘Coco’ Cohen an outsider in Port Reuben Ailinn Solomons a recent arrival to the town Esme Nussbaum Ailinn’s companion Everett Zermansky a teacher of the Benign Visual Arts, he is also writing a report on Kevern Densdell Kroplik Kevern’s incomprehensible neighbour Lowenna Morgenstern a local woman who is murdered in mysterious circumstances Detective Inspector Gutkind a local police officer investigating Lowenna Morgenstern’s murder
Questions for general discussion At the start of the novel, Kevern Cohen performs a ritual before leaving the house, checking his phone twice, rumpling the hallway runner, locking and double-locking the front door and peering through the letter box to check that all is as it should be. What role does paranoia play in the book? Throughout the book there are references to WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED. What exactly do you think happened, and how did it start? ‘Forcing brutish kisses on people you neither knew well nor cared much for wasn’t confined to men. Both sexes broke skin when they could.’ Discuss the portrayal of violence in J. J is made up of fragmented narratives, letters, songs and fables. Did you enjoy this approach? Kevern isn’t sure if he has fallen in love with Ailinn of his own accord. Does it matter whether love is caused by fate, or engineered by external forces?
Quotation-based questions A frog was thrown into a pan of boiling water. ‘What do you take me for?’ the frog said, jumping smartly out. ‘Some kind of a shlemiel?’ The following day the frog was lowered gently, even lovingly, into a pan of lukewarm water. As the temperature was increased, a degree at a time, the frog luxuriated, floating lethargically on his back with his eyes closed, imagining himself at an exclusive spa. ‘This is the life,’ the frog said. Relaxed in every joint, blissfully unaware, the frog allowed himself to be boiled to death. Why has Howard Jacobson included this fable? Who or what is represented by the frog? Who places the frog in the water, and why? He had to explain what jazz was. Ailinn had never heard any. Jazz, too, without exactly being proscribed, wasn’t played. Improvisation had fallen out of fashion. There was room for only one ‘if’ in life. People wanted to be sure, when a tune began, exactly where it was going to end. Wit, the same. Its unpredict¬ability unsettled people’s nerves. And jazz was wit expressed musically. How important is popular culture, or the lack of it, in J. What is the reason for the existence of the Benign Visual Arts? Is art innately subversive in the world of J? The cliffs would be a good place to be, on his bench, side by side with Ailinn, looking out to the dead, consoling sea. It wouldn’t change anything but weather was preferable to the cottage, and the great sea justified his fears. The world was terrifying. Where exactly is Port Reuben? How does the landscape of Port Reuben affect the characters? Does the isolation of the community make it a safer or more dangerous place to live? Nothing gleamed in the city Kevern looked out on. The people on the streets had not turned into walking computer screens, riding translucent vehicles that sped along on tracks of spun steel. But neither was it a wasteland that could at least quicken the heart with horror. Why do Kevern and Ailinn go to the Necropolis? What do they, and the reader, learn about WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED? Why are they so relieved to return to Port Reuben? ‘The Cohens! I’m a Cohen,’ Kevern said. He felt a burst of excitement as he said it. Ranajay Margolis had asked him where he was from originally. What if he was from here? Would he encounter people who looked like him on the streets? Uncles, nieces, cousins? Would they be sitting on benches – so many tall, angel-haired ‘Cocos’ with long faces – minding their language and wondering what their lives amounted to? Ranajay studied his reflection in the driver’s mirror. ‘No,’ he explained, ‘I mean real Cohens.’ In a world where everyone has been renamed, do names matter at all? Are nicknames more important than family names? Do you think it is helpful to identify someone’s race, culture and creed by their name?
Suggested further reading George Orwell Nineteen Eighty-Four Aldous Huxley Brave New World Franz Kafka The Castle Philip K. Dick The Man in the High Castle Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale