HIP BOOK REVIEW: What Will Survive of Us
By Howard Jacobson
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
REVIEW BY VIOLA VON HARRACH
Muse for a moment on the title of Howard Jacobson’s latest novel, his 17th, What Will Survive of Us, and you will probably guess what it is about. Read on, for this is an erudite, insightful, funny, moving novel. A meditation on middle-aged love, adulterous at first and then as the plot moves to love much later in life, the emotional piques, the desire for danger, putting love on the edge, but also the conventions, give or take a basque and a whip, that evolve with a long-term marriage or partnership.
AN ADULTEROUS AND OBSESSIVE LOVE AFFAIR
Lily is a forty something documentary filmmaker, a liberated strong-minded woman who fiercely guards her independence, until the ‘kerpow’ moment when she meets Sam in the opening sequence of the book. He is also fortyish, and an award-winning playwright with a drink problem, indolent and self-centred, with a high opinion of himself and a chip about his father. They fall for each other, this incongruous pair, and work together on a documentary about DH Lawrence in Mexico.
But there are complications, Lily is good at what she does while Sam isn’t a natural for the screen and at this point in the story it seems unlikely that they will work together again. Also, both are in petering out, past the sell-by date relationships, Lily with Hal, Sam with Selena, and the endings of these relationships ebb, colour, and add frisson to their adulterous and indeed obsessive love affair.
FULL OF HIS IRASCIBLE HUMOUR AND WRY COMMENTARY
Jacobson has always been strong on empathy and understanding of the male lot in life. Less so of his female leads. So, it is no surprise that Sam’s playwriting subject matter has to do with the male perspective on life even though it is often Lily who leads and is the more dependable and indeed likeable character. But then all can be forgiven, for Jacobson’s writing has agility, intensity and depth, and is full of his irascible humour and wry commentary. Plus, there is a more serious side to the book even though there are times when it feels as if Jacobson is so excited by the plot that he can barely keep up with the telling.
Lily and Sam finally buy a house together and the living is good. Though, as Jacobson muses, “materiality might have been their enemy, but they made a sort of peace with it, although, ‘nothing is forever in their view’.” The question for the reader is why and how, twenty years on, Lily and Sam have made it through to older age. What keeps them together? What binds them every day in a relationship.
NOT A STORY BUT A POEM
But then this book is a meditation on the vagaries of life. It is a great story, full of wisdom and truths. It is also well told though Sam explains it as, “not a story but a poem.” Indeed, the story poses many questions about the nature of relationships, the coming together, the staying, the living on, what makes, what breaks, what nurtures and ultimately, the forever love that is just that. And in the writing of this novel Jacobson is at his best.
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