Making it through to the Booker Prize 2014 longlist before your book has even been released is a pretty impressive feat for Howard Jacobson and his dystopian love story J, but the good news was that the release date wasn’t too far behind the nomination. Criticism for the prize and judging panel decisions aside, you can’t take anything away from the authors themselves and one thing’s for sure, J is clearly a novel worthy of interest.
The release date was on the 14th August 2014, a little under a month after the longlist was announced, and it hit the shelves on hardback just before going on to make it through to the 2014 Booker Prize shortlist, giving the public a chance to read why the novel is so noteworthy. It’s not the only book in the list to have been included prior to its release – David Mitchell’s The Bone Clocks made it in too and wasn’t released until the 2nd September 2014 – however, it is the one we were most looking forward to read from longlist.
The story is set in a future in which the past has been deemed dangerous and not to be talked about and where a questioning mind only finds trouble. In the midst of the fractured society the focus is on a young couple that find love and try to make it stick, despite the fact that neither Kevern nor Ailinn know much about their respective histories.
They can’t understand why Kevern’s father has unusual reactions any time he mentions a word starting with the letter J or why Ailinn turns up to their first date with black eyes. They don’t even know for sure whether or not they’re love is real or if it’s been fabricated somehow, but in their future it doesn’t pay to probe too deeply, because a brutal reaction is never too far away.
J clearly has some similarities to George Orwell’s 1984, but it’s also been likened to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, so expectations were high for a new dystopian masterpiece. At 340 pages long it’s not exactly a tome, but it’s far from a quick tryst either, as the subject matter aims to fire up your grey matter and give you something new to base conceptual reassessment on.
The book is Howard Jacobson’s thirteenth fictional novel, building on his recent success with The Finkler Question, which went on to win the 2010 Booker Prize, and his critically acclaimed 2008 novel, The Act Of Love. With so much running in his favour, Jacobson was one of the favourites to pick up this year’s Booker Prize, but he narrowly missed out to The Narrow Road To The Deep North by Richard Flanagan.
Read our J by Howard Jacobson review to find out more about our take on the novel and its critical reception.
