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from Cathy (cathyvpreece@aol.com)
Evening Standard 15 April 2002 Deliciously dirty-minded

Who's Sorry Now? Howard Jacobson (Cape, £16.99)

Reviewed by William Leith

Howard Jacobson is a fine observer of dirty-minded men tormented by their ambitions, sexual and otherwise, and his new character, Marvin Kreitman, is a beauty. Kreitman is "dark and shiny, with a complexion as polished as the carapace of a beetle"; he's a luggage tycoon with a Georgian house in Kennington, a wife, two daughters and five mistresses. His obsession with sex is "like an illness", but so is his obsession with the handbags and suitcases and purses he sells; fingering the soft leather of an upmarket purse, we are told, "filled Kreitman with the purest satisfaction he knew".

Of course, he is desperately unhappy. Having grown up in the shadow of his nasty, uncommunicative father - a luggage baron who died of "gangrene of the personality" - Kreitman has a deep, unfulfilled yearning to be something else: a man of letters. But he's a tycoon - somehow, he can't help it. His schedule is punitive. He rages around London, permanently intoxicated by leather goods and the flesh of sexually adventurous women. He loves the leather, but he's never satisfied by the human flesh; he always wants more.

Describing the experience of having sex with Kreitman, his tough, vibrant wife, Hazel, says, "Marvin used to ransack my body as though he'd lost something. It was like being Treasure Island, like having Long John Silver stomping across you with a spade and bucket."

One day, this "sperm-tank heterosexual", this "serial faller-in-love" is having lunch with his best friend, Charlie Merriweather, an author of children's books. On the surface, the two men could hardly be more different. Merriweather is a huge, lumbering softie who has only ever had sex with one woman - his huge, lumbering wife. And the sex they have, what's more, is "nice", quite unlike Kreitman's brutal jabbings and shaftings. So it comes as a shock when Merriweather offers to swap his wife for one of Kreitman's six women. And, this being a Howard Jacobson novel, it comes as less of a shock when events conspire to grant Merriweather his wish.

Merriweather is another interesting creation. He's a "prep-school glutton" who gorges on cheap curries, "stainless-steel bowls of blistering brown slop". He was bullied at school. His mother didn't care. Then he married a woman who, to Kreitman, is the epitome of sexlessness - "the vegetable in her seemed to outweigh the animal". And now, after more than two decades of monogamy, Merriweather has caught the same disease as his best friend.

He finds himself making eyes at women and leering at girls who are, as Kreitman says, "young enough to be your readers". The scenes that follow - Kreitman's vegetarian couplings and Merriweather's carnivorous ones - are painful, funny, and highly readable. Jacobson is at the top of his verbal form here. His subject, as it emerges, is a good one - the inability of men to admit they are unhappy. "How long does it take to go mad?" asks Jacobson. The answer is: "Overnight, if you've been putting in the groundwork for 30 years." This is an author who understands the inner conflicts of dirty-minded men. As the obsessive shagger Kreitman puts it: "Sex isn't nice." And he should know.

© Associated Newspapers Ltd., 15 April 2002

(posted 8017 days ago)

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