The Finkler Question (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit

Write a ridiculously simplified synopsis.

Characters/People edit see section history

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• Julian Treslove: Is seeking for meaning to life - but lacks stability and any sense of responsibility
• Sam Finkler: Successful Jewish TV personality - lacks sensitivity
• Libor Sevcik: Wise old 90 yo Jewish man - in his life times gone from poverty to success in movies
• Hephzibah: related to Libor
• Tyler Finkler: Sam Finkler's wife
• Alfredo: one of Treslove's sons
• Ronit Kravitz: Sam Finkler's mistress
• Rodolfo: one of Treslove's sons
• Emmy: someone Libor knew a long time ago, makes contact with him after his wife's death
• Malkie: Libor's wife
• Tamara Krausz: Add a description of this character.
• Horowitz
• Merton Kugle

Quotes edit see section history

• “Just when you think you've overcome the grief, you realise you are left with the loneliness.”

  Libor Sevcik

• “Whenever Julian passed a willow or a brook, or best of all a willow aslant a brook <...> he saw Ophelia in the water, her clothes spread wide and mermaidlike, singing her melodious lay.”

• “His incompletion, his untogetherness, his beginning waiting for an end, or was it his end waiting for a beginning, his story waiting for a plot.”

• “Though once Libor did say, 'Just when you think you've overcome the grief, you realiseyou are left with the loneliness.'Treslove tried to imagine a loneliness greater than his own. 'Just when you get over theloneliness,' he thought, 'you realise you are left with the grief.'”

• “Better to go through life waiting for what never came, because that way you had less to mourn?”

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• How do you go on living knowing that you will never again – not ever, ever – see the person you have loved? How do you survive a single hour, a single minute, a single second of that knowledge? How do you hold yourself together?

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• At any age there is future one doesn’t have. Never enough life when you are happy, that was the thing. Never so much bliss that you can’t take a little more.

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• Talking feverishly about being Jewish was being Jewish.

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• Was this what had all along been missing from his life – a palpable loss to justify his hitherto groundless sensation of it, the theft of actual possessions as opposed to the constantly nagging consciousness of something having gone missing?

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• It gave him a preternaturally youthful look – this unconsummated expectation of tragic event. The look which people born again into their faith sometimes acquire.

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• You have to be born and brought up a Jew to see the hand of Jews in everything. That or be born and brought up a Nazi.

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• At a certain age men began to shrink, and yet it was precisely at that age that their trousers became too short for them. Explain that.

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• If this was what all Jews looked like, Treslove thought, then Finkler, which sounded like Sprinkler, was a better name for them than Jew. So that was what he called them privately – Finklers.

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• What moved him was this proof of the destructibility of things; everything exacted its price in the end, and perhaps happiness exacted it even more cruelly than its opposite. Was it better then – measuring the loss – not to know happiness at all? Better to go through life waiting for what never came, because that way you had less to mourn?

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• ‘Just when you think you’ve overcome the grief, you realise you are left with the loneliness.’ Treslove tried to imagine a loneliness greater than his own. ‘Just when you get over the loneliness,’ he thought, ‘you realise you are left with the grief.’

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• London
• Eastbourne

Organizations edit see section history

• ASHamed Jews: Add a description of this organization.
• Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Wolf Hall, and followed by The Sense of an Ending.

Preceded by Just Kids, and followed by The Twin.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Howard Jacobson (Author)
2. Howard Jacobson (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Man Booker Prize (2010)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 813

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• National Public Radio: Review on All Things Considered