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The Making of Henry
Acclaimed as Britain’s greatest and most underrated novelist, this is Howard Jacobson’s masterpiece.
One day, out of the blue, Henry Nagel receives a solicitor’s letter telling him he has inherited a sumptuous apartment in St. John’s Wood. Divine intervention? Or his late father’s love nest? Henry doesn’t know, but he is glad to escape the North, where there is nothing to keep him. After nearly sixty years of angry disappointment, Henry’s life is about to change.
Not that the ghosts of Henry’s past are prepared to disappear without a struggle – his old friend and rival Osmond “Hovis” Belkin, currently enjoying a spectacularly successful career in Hollywood, his great aunt Marghanita for whom he once entertained a dangerous passion, and his father Izzi Nagel, upholsterer turned illusionist, fire-eater and origamist, whose shade Henry interrogates relentlessly. But the present clamours as loudly as the past. His dyspeptic neighbour Lachlan wants his sympathy, Lachlan’s sloppy red setter, Angus, wants a walk, and Moira, the waitress with the crooked smile and custard hair, seems to want him. Kicking and screaming every inch of the way, Henry realizes he might finally be falling in love. Will love be the making of Henry?
Tender, funny and beautifully told, The Making of Henry is Howard Jacobson’s richest novel to date. The writing makes you gasp with pleasure, the story builds effortlessly to its crescendo of revelations and, above all, it adds a new warmth to his reputation as the most exhilaratingly intelligent of contemporary novelists.
From the Hardcover edition.
One day, out of the blue, Henry Nagel receives a solicitor’s letter telling him he has inherited a sumptuous apartment in St. John’s Wood. Divine intervention? Or his late father’s love nest? Henry doesn’t know, but he is glad to escape the North, where there is nothing to keep him. After nearly sixty years of angry disappointment, Henry’s life is about to change.
Not that the ghosts of Henry’s past are prepared to disappear without a struggle – his old friend and rival Osmond “Hovis” Belkin, currently enjoying a spectacularly successful career in Hollywood, his great aunt Marghanita for whom he once entertained a dangerous passion, and his father Izzi Nagel, upholsterer turned illusionist, fire-eater and origamist, whose shade Henry interrogates relentlessly. But the present clamours as loudly as the past. His dyspeptic neighbour Lachlan wants his sympathy, Lachlan’s sloppy red setter, Angus, wants a walk, and Moira, the waitress with the crooked smile and custard hair, seems to want him. Kicking and screaming every inch of the way, Henry realizes he might finally be falling in love. Will love be the making of Henry?
Tender, funny and beautifully told, The Making of Henry is Howard Jacobson’s richest novel to date. The writing makes you gasp with pleasure, the story builds effortlessly to its crescendo of revelations and, above all, it adds a new warmth to his reputation as the most exhilaratingly intelligent of contemporary novelists.
From the Hardcover edition.
352 pages, Paperback
First published August 24, 2004
8 people are currently reading
135 people want to read
About the author
Howard Jacobson
77 books384 followersHoward Jacobson was born in Manchester, England, and educated at Cambridge. His many novels include The Mighty Walzer (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Who’s Sorry Now? and Kalooki Nights (both longlisted for the Man Booker Prize), and, most recently, The Act of Love. Jacobson is also a respected critic and broadcaster, and writes a weekly column for the Independent. He lives in London.
Profile of Howard Jacobson in The New York Times.
“The book's appeal to Jewish readers is obvious, but like all great Jewish art — the paintings of Marc Chagall, the books of Saul Bellow, the films of Woody Allen — it is Jacobson's use of the Jewish experience to explain the greater human one that sets it apart. Who among us is so certain of our identity? Who hasn't been asked, "What's your background" and hesitated, even for a split second, to answer their inquisitor? Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question forces us to ask that of ourselves, and that's why it's a must read, no matter what your background.”—-David Sax, NPR.
Profile of Howard Jacobson in The New York Times.
“The book's appeal to Jewish readers is obvious, but like all great Jewish art — the paintings of Marc Chagall, the books of Saul Bellow, the films of Woody Allen — it is Jacobson's use of the Jewish experience to explain the greater human one that sets it apart. Who among us is so certain of our identity? Who hasn't been asked, "What's your background" and hesitated, even for a split second, to answer their inquisitor? Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question forces us to ask that of ourselves, and that's why it's a must read, no matter what your background.”—-David Sax, NPR.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
August 24, 2018
Recovering From the Love of Women
The eponymous Henry is, not to put too fine a point on it, a sissy, a mama'a boy, a wuss (or perhaps in North Manchester a wuzz). Not effeminate or gay, but born into, raised, protected and launched, if that isn't too active a verb, by a bevy of women who adored him. The result was predictable, and indeed predicted by Henry's father: he, Henry, became a girl. That is to say, he had no interest in auto mechanics, an incapacity with tools, little desire for male mate-ship, and a lifelong preference for older women, even when they were younger than he.
I share Henry's debilitating pedigree: a beautiful mother, two devoted grandmothers, a married aunt without children, a maiden aunt who thought I could be the Messiah, and even a clutch of great-aunts, known even in their dotage, like Henry’s entourage, as The Girls. My identification with Henry is intense. So I can feel his dismay and confusion about adult life, not because the world at large is more brutal or unsympathetic than the warm nest created and maintained by loving women, but because, as Jacobson says bluntly, "Women died." The only thing a man brought up by adoring women can do when they die is pine in a resentful, clumsy, perpetually childish way: “Without a woman in his life, Henry was like the world before God created it. Nothing but flying fragments...Trouble was - order was death. Chaos life, order death.”
Recovery from the loss of loving women can take some time, perhaps a life-time. There is, in short, no free lunch. The Making of Henry is a story of how payment can be made - told with wit, humour and sensitivity that is accessible universally, not just within Jacobson’s Mancunian Jewish oeuvre.
The eponymous Henry is, not to put too fine a point on it, a sissy, a mama'a boy, a wuss (or perhaps in North Manchester a wuzz). Not effeminate or gay, but born into, raised, protected and launched, if that isn't too active a verb, by a bevy of women who adored him. The result was predictable, and indeed predicted by Henry's father: he, Henry, became a girl. That is to say, he had no interest in auto mechanics, an incapacity with tools, little desire for male mate-ship, and a lifelong preference for older women, even when they were younger than he.
I share Henry's debilitating pedigree: a beautiful mother, two devoted grandmothers, a married aunt without children, a maiden aunt who thought I could be the Messiah, and even a clutch of great-aunts, known even in their dotage, like Henry’s entourage, as The Girls. My identification with Henry is intense. So I can feel his dismay and confusion about adult life, not because the world at large is more brutal or unsympathetic than the warm nest created and maintained by loving women, but because, as Jacobson says bluntly, "Women died." The only thing a man brought up by adoring women can do when they die is pine in a resentful, clumsy, perpetually childish way: “Without a woman in his life, Henry was like the world before God created it. Nothing but flying fragments...Trouble was - order was death. Chaos life, order death.”
Recovery from the loss of loving women can take some time, perhaps a life-time. There is, in short, no free lunch. The Making of Henry is a story of how payment can be made - told with wit, humour and sensitivity that is accessible universally, not just within Jacobson’s Mancunian Jewish oeuvre.
February 25, 2019
Plenty to enjoy, but you need a bit of literary stamina to see it through.
August 8, 2018
OK, so I'm wrestling with the rating to give this book. And I've arrived at 3.5 stars.
First of all, I don't think I've ever read a book written by an author like Howard Jacobson before. Zany is the best way I know to describe it. And the best way I can think of to tell you about the type of writing is this: if you're a fan of Monty Python and laugh-out-loud British movies (at least I think they are) like "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and "Snatch", then you'll enjoy this book like I did, I think.
I'll definitely be reading some of Mr. Jacobson's other books.
However, curiously enough, I almost didn't finish this book because the 60-year-old narrator going on, and on, and on, and on, and on(!!!) about his childhood ... and NO, I'm not talking about different things from his childhood but the SAME things from his childhood over and over and over again ... !! I definitely think the book could have been edited down by 100 pages maybe and been just as good, or probably better. Or maybe it was necessary to show just how neurotic the guy was.
First of all, I don't think I've ever read a book written by an author like Howard Jacobson before. Zany is the best way I know to describe it. And the best way I can think of to tell you about the type of writing is this: if you're a fan of Monty Python and laugh-out-loud British movies (at least I think they are) like "The Grand Budapest Hotel" and "Snatch", then you'll enjoy this book like I did, I think.
I'll definitely be reading some of Mr. Jacobson's other books.
However, curiously enough, I almost didn't finish this book because the 60-year-old narrator going on, and on, and on, and on, and on(!!!) about his childhood ... and NO, I'm not talking about different things from his childhood but the SAME things from his childhood over and over and over again ... !! I definitely think the book could have been edited down by 100 pages maybe and been just as good, or probably better. Or maybe it was necessary to show just how neurotic the guy was.
February 3, 2012
Excellent book - favourite quote from it:
"Always in our hearts, be blowed. Gone, that's what. Gone away, gone under, gone for ever."
Very sophisticated use of humour & intricate/unusual/gripping use of language - enjoyable as much as it is well written, as the story itself. I would read more books by this author due to his clever use of humour.
"Always in our hearts, be blowed. Gone, that's what. Gone away, gone under, gone for ever."
Very sophisticated use of humour & intricate/unusual/gripping use of language - enjoyable as much as it is well written, as the story itself. I would read more books by this author due to his clever use of humour.
December 15, 2011
A comic writer of enormous talent. This novel is the third or so I have read by him. In this one, a crusty curmudgeon is nudged toward love.
January 3, 2013
Perhaps my two star rating is unfair, given I only read a quarter of the book. But then it never engaged me sufficiently for me to get past the first quarter. My first Jacobson, and I was quite looking forward to reading it. First impression: a British version of Philip Roth, only not nearly as good. I don't know, his prose just gives the impression that he is trying very hard.
July 3, 2013
It started really well and I loved the Jewish humour and language but Henry's obsession with death and lack of drive wa a bit wearing by the end. I still enjoyed it though and woul like to read more of his books.
November 8, 2016
So well written and unique
July 31, 2019
Dense but oh so satisfying. Gorgeous prose. Stick with it. Heartbreaking but oh so human.
September 13, 2021
Personally connected with the novel ❤️
April 3, 2018
I am a keen reader of Jacobson and as usual I found much in this book to enjoy. briefly, it is about a man labelled from birth by his family as having a "thin skin" and his failures (many and various) to move beyond this label and thus to thrive. eventually towards the end of a life for which he has taken no responsibility or exerted any agency he comes to a point of some reckoning and self-awareness. it is a long novel and full of many introspective meanderings, flights of colourful perspective and ascerbic observations (as are all Jacobson's novels), but I do continue to struggle with the anti-feminism and male egocentrism that haunts his writing. this book particularly could have done with considerable editing. while the awful self-absorption of the main character of the novel is certainly a source of the novelist's satire, it is just too self-involved to be entertaining or engaging in all it's intensity and verbosity and much could have been edited out I feel. but as usual I learned much about Jewish identities and how Judaism is expressed and lived by different generations and 'classes" of post-WW2 Jews in Britain, as well as some of the frictions that exist between those communities. this was largely a novel dealing with how we approach our lives and our deaths. a person who denies or is fearful of death is likely to put so much energy into their fear that their lives are sacrificed to that preoccupation and they are only half-hearted in the actual living of their lives in any present. it was also a story of the myths we create (in this case about parents) and how profoundly they can distort our lives if we let them. our exculpatory searches for progenitors or external justifications for our perceived failures, sometimes even into our old age. whether it be parents, communities, cultures or religions , whether it be class or national GDP ... our determination to obviscate our individual responsibilities for our lives seems to be a hallmark of our species. OK, that isn't Jacobson, that was just me.
April 29, 2024
DNF. In Henry I was expecting to find a cantankerous curmudgeon, but I wanted him to have a redeeming quality (like Fredrik Backman's Ove). Sadly after almost 200 pages of irredeemable drivel I was forced to give up.
May 18, 2025
Incredibly well-written, but relentless in its focus on solipsistic Henry. At one point I wondered where the plot was, but eventually decided it didn't matter. I suppose it would have been difficult to have been as funny about a likeable central character.
August 12, 2017
The low rating is more a reflection of my preferred type of book than of this novel. It is well written and entertaining in parts but I just can't muster any enthusiasm for the eponymous Henry.
October 11, 2021
Howard Jacobson is obviously an excellent author but this novel is pointless. Not worth your time.
May 27, 2022
Quintessential HJ, and rather sweet.
January 31, 2025
Jacobson is too clever by half! Henry reminds me of Steve Coogan in the Trip, and Moira is fabulous.
June 12, 2022
Oedipus schmoedipus, as long as his mummy loves him? This review is rather like the book- over- long,allusive, tortuous,but there you are.
Adolescent smut, obsession with death, would- be incest, disgust at dogs' ways, an obnoxious central character around whose baffled, potentially mysogenic and misanthropic persona women run circles,along with a sometimes over- literary style- these and more await the easily- upset or offput reader of this book, which is very funny at times,situationally and descriptively, if of that black humour- appreciating mind (there's a lot of mind in it).
It is also infuriating, even boring, in its overwrought introspection- or indeed extrospection,by the narrator- but that's also the point of this schlemiel of a protagonist. But an almost dialectic,casuistic introspection dominates the writing.
The story,mainly a life story around a central final resolution of sorts, depicts the tortuous mental processes of a man, pampered by women from birth, who feels perpetually unmanned and put down. His coping tactics,which can be very spiteful, are convincingly portrayed and add up to unobliging and largely unpleasant character traits. It is a deal too long,mainly due to the mental convolutions being indulged in detail.
There are laugh-out-loud thumbnail.portraits of characters (a female academic colleague dresses severely. like a mime, and stands on one leg like a stork,with just a gash of red lipstick; another, oversolicitous, who only has to ask you how you are to make you feel terrible) , along with ludicrous situations, such as a first and only reluctant dog walk by Henry, who has never taken a dog for a walk. These often act as one- liners in a mass of more morose introspection,acting both as relief and incongruous contrast.
There is a strong tilt at a perceived feminisation of academic Eng Lit, which could lead to warnings that students might be upset by latent mysogeny in the perhaps unlikely event that this book becomes a university set text- amongst Henry's achievements. "... he had a degree in girls' literature". But to characterise the authorial tone as mysogenic would be inaccurate - the men are all flawed, ineffectual or overbearing,whereas most of the women have strong and often positive characteristics,so misanthropic would be closer.
I'd say this was a Marmite book on the experience of my book club, except that I was the only one to finish,let alone like it.
I think familiarity with or appreciation of the British Jewish idiom,with its a smatteting of largely explained direct Yiddish terms, will either help or hinder appreciation of the narrative as a whole,along with the bathetic humour ( "so he took her (the father's supposed mistress) to the Midland Hotel, in broad daylight- he should have taken her somewhere cheaper?")
There is a final,ironic resolution to a mess of a life and to more than one family mystery, and a suitably ironic finish to some preposterous situations. I quite enjoyed it but the weight of the character's content was too slight for such a large book, and I would dip rather than read through again - too much already!
Adolescent smut, obsession with death, would- be incest, disgust at dogs' ways, an obnoxious central character around whose baffled, potentially mysogenic and misanthropic persona women run circles,along with a sometimes over- literary style- these and more await the easily- upset or offput reader of this book, which is very funny at times,situationally and descriptively, if of that black humour- appreciating mind (there's a lot of mind in it).
It is also infuriating, even boring, in its overwrought introspection- or indeed extrospection,by the narrator- but that's also the point of this schlemiel of a protagonist. But an almost dialectic,casuistic introspection dominates the writing.
The story,mainly a life story around a central final resolution of sorts, depicts the tortuous mental processes of a man, pampered by women from birth, who feels perpetually unmanned and put down. His coping tactics,which can be very spiteful, are convincingly portrayed and add up to unobliging and largely unpleasant character traits. It is a deal too long,mainly due to the mental convolutions being indulged in detail.
There are laugh-out-loud thumbnail.portraits of characters (a female academic colleague dresses severely. like a mime, and stands on one leg like a stork,with just a gash of red lipstick; another, oversolicitous, who only has to ask you how you are to make you feel terrible) , along with ludicrous situations, such as a first and only reluctant dog walk by Henry, who has never taken a dog for a walk. These often act as one- liners in a mass of more morose introspection,acting both as relief and incongruous contrast.
There is a strong tilt at a perceived feminisation of academic Eng Lit, which could lead to warnings that students might be upset by latent mysogeny in the perhaps unlikely event that this book becomes a university set text- amongst Henry's achievements. "... he had a degree in girls' literature". But to characterise the authorial tone as mysogenic would be inaccurate - the men are all flawed, ineffectual or overbearing,whereas most of the women have strong and often positive characteristics,so misanthropic would be closer.
I'd say this was a Marmite book on the experience of my book club, except that I was the only one to finish,let alone like it.
I think familiarity with or appreciation of the British Jewish idiom,with its a smatteting of largely explained direct Yiddish terms, will either help or hinder appreciation of the narrative as a whole,along with the bathetic humour ( "so he took her (the father's supposed mistress) to the Midland Hotel, in broad daylight- he should have taken her somewhere cheaper?")
There is a final,ironic resolution to a mess of a life and to more than one family mystery, and a suitably ironic finish to some preposterous situations. I quite enjoyed it but the weight of the character's content was too slight for such a large book, and I would dip rather than read through again - too much already!
March 7, 2013
This is one of those books that I don't even remember exactly why or how I acquired. I mean, undoubtedly I acquired it in one of the bookstores where I was working, and undoubtedly it was free, but it's not an advance readers' edition, and I have no recollection of what might have made me pick it up in the first place. In any event, the book is described in a blurb on the front as "Gloriously, edifyingly funny...an expansive and compassionate view of humanity." Hm. Well, it's about Henry (obviously), who is around 60, a mostly-failed professor of literature, and what one might call a misanthrope except that it's not so much that he doesn't like people as it is that he doesn't know what to think about them. He's spent his entire life with an invisible wall between him and other people, which might be why the only way he finds himself relating to women is when they're married to other men.
Henry inherits an apartment under mysterious circumstances, and becomes the unwilling acquaintance of his new neighbor and the man's dog. Meanwhile, Henry has a crush on a waitress who may be attached to the neighbor, but at least isn't married. Around this curmudgeon-meets-girl storyline are many, many recollections of and reflections on Henry's childhood, which seems to be mostly incomprehensible to him. Things he knows: his mother read him too much Jane Eyre, his one friendship in life wasn't much of a friendship if you look at the relationship factually, his father had the stunningly impractical job of origami maker/fire eater, and there was more to everything than met the eye. The central question of the book is whether or not Henry will manage to make any sort of real connection with another human being before he dies.
A quote from the book, demonstrative of the type of humor you'll find in it (dry and wordy): "Perhaps they liked having him there as a warning and a specimen, like the mock-up of the woolly mammoth or the mastodon you find in the entrance halls to provincial museums, evidence of the life that once roamed the planet but which, due to some fault of character or design, some incorrigible predisposition to male-centered humanism, some congenital incapacity to publish, is now extinct." Comparisons are made between Jacobson and Updike and Roth, neither of whom I've read anything by (they're on the 1001 list, though), so perhaps you'd enjoy this if you like them. Personally, I found it odd and while Henry's life and observations were sometimes funny, they were more often sad, or perhaps pathetic is a better word.
Henry inherits an apartment under mysterious circumstances, and becomes the unwilling acquaintance of his new neighbor and the man's dog. Meanwhile, Henry has a crush on a waitress who may be attached to the neighbor, but at least isn't married. Around this curmudgeon-meets-girl storyline are many, many recollections of and reflections on Henry's childhood, which seems to be mostly incomprehensible to him. Things he knows: his mother read him too much Jane Eyre, his one friendship in life wasn't much of a friendship if you look at the relationship factually, his father had the stunningly impractical job of origami maker/fire eater, and there was more to everything than met the eye. The central question of the book is whether or not Henry will manage to make any sort of real connection with another human being before he dies.
A quote from the book, demonstrative of the type of humor you'll find in it (dry and wordy): "Perhaps they liked having him there as a warning and a specimen, like the mock-up of the woolly mammoth or the mastodon you find in the entrance halls to provincial museums, evidence of the life that once roamed the planet but which, due to some fault of character or design, some incorrigible predisposition to male-centered humanism, some congenital incapacity to publish, is now extinct." Comparisons are made between Jacobson and Updike and Roth, neither of whom I've read anything by (they're on the 1001 list, though), so perhaps you'd enjoy this if you like them. Personally, I found it odd and while Henry's life and observations were sometimes funny, they were more often sad, or perhaps pathetic is a better word.
May 22, 2018
I'm sorry, I really do not share Jacobson's sense of humour - an occasional smile for the rare neat turn of phrase was the best I could manage - so I missed all the enthusiasm in reviews for his comic genius. Worse, there is hardly a cliche that the author misses, a stereotype that he leaves aside: if they were meant to be funny, they just brought out the curmudgeon on me.
I was close to putting this book aside unfinished and even now I wonder why I didn't: the whole was immensely unsatisfactory and unsatisfying. It was my first Jacobson and, unless I'm convinced there is something better, much, much better, it'll be my last.
I was close to putting this book aside unfinished and even now I wonder why I didn't: the whole was immensely unsatisfactory and unsatisfying. It was my first Jacobson and, unless I'm convinced there is something better, much, much better, it'll be my last.
April 5, 2014
Not funny, too self-obsessed
Henry is so self-obsessively obnoxious that I:
a)could never find his expolits funny; and
b)wasn’t engaged enough to appreciate or be interested in the wry humour or even the insights that this intelligent author undoubtedly has.
Which was a shame, because if he has been on Booker lists, he must be good. Mustn’t he?
Raised the odd smile, but as soon as I found out that Henry shares biography with Jacobson, I was put off. Introspection like that does not make the sort of fiction I like reading.
If I want astute examination of the male Jewish psyche, I’ll stick to Roth. He does it way better, without trying half as hard as this “novel” did. This had a thousandth of the imagination, a pale shadow of the wit, and none of the intellectual power of even an average Roth novel.
Or I'll read some Woody Allen. He's funny. Or, he used to be.
I intended reading this as a prelude to trying “The Finkler Question”, which was so acclaimed; but I doubt I’ll bother now.
May 27, 2014
Its hard for me to rate most of Jacobson's books. I find the writing to be very good, but I have a hard time really liking any of his main characters. They come across as weak and indecisive to me. The title character in this book, Henry Nagel spends half of the book bemoaning his lot in life even though he is the main architect of all of his shortcomings. His love interest, Moira, on the other hand is a very likable character; strong, sensible and willing to put up with Henry's foibles. This is my third book by Jacobson, and this seems to be the central theme throughout all of the books that I've read. I do keep going back to read more, so I guess the writing and the story are sufficient to carry the story.
December 13, 2010
My first read by this years Man Booker award winner. Starts out very humorous, then get progressively less funny and the character more pathetic over the next 200 or so pages, picking up a bit in the last 50 pages. Henry is a bit of an anti-hero (how can anyone almost precisely my age, somewhat close to my sensibilities in some areas...be such an irritating, irredeemable schlub, I wonder!). But I'm glad I stuck with it,,,there IS a payoff...but I would be hard pressed to recommend this particular novel to many of my friends. I am hoping that the Man Booker winner, "The Finkler Question," is a good deal more wickedly funny and engaging.
April 10, 2014
I read this author because he is a Booker Award winner on another book. The guy seems to be neurotic! He rambles and splits hairs about everything that anyone says or does, but the more I read the funnier the book got until I was laughing out loud. The book's definitely not for everyone, but I thought it was really funny.
August 2, 2013
I gave it 50 pages...it put me to sleep every time I started reading it. I was hoping for something as entertaining as The Mighty Walzer
Read
August 8, 2009Click here to find it in the catalogue.
March 4, 2012
Far less even than either Kalooki Nights or The Finkler Question, but with some sublime passages. Amazing how repetitive he is in one book after another ...
February 22, 2013
Very good, but not a fast paced read.
December 11, 2013
Henry is pretty obsessive but a well drawn character
April 20, 2015
It was slow to start, but the characters really grew on me, enough so that I think it might be fun to re-read this in the future.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews