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Pomeranski (2020) by Gerald Jacobs

Thanks to Mark for highlighting it

It sounds very promising

As Benny ‘the Fixer’ Pomeranski is laid to rest on a cold November morning at the turn of the twenty-first century, a motley crew of survivors from his youth assembles around the grave, its members ‘identified by their lived-in faces – faces that indicated a singular kind of past, a chequered hinterland.’ This encounter with the past, and the discovery of his father Benny’s diaries, leads Simon Pomeranski back to his childhood and the post-war days of the Astorians, a small group of criminals and traders in ‘swag’ who ran their business from Brixton Market and exercised their own particular brand of justice.

From this wonderful assortment of characters we are introduced to ‘Spanish’ Joe, the cultured Russian émigré, Sam ‘the Stick’, with his wounded machismo and penchant for violent retribution, and the dazzling songstress Estelle, among others. Front and centre in their world, though, is Benny himself, the autodidact owner of Pomeranski Gowns, whose passionate affair with Estelle marks the beginning of a new era for the Astorians.

Gerald Jacobs is the literary editor of the Jewish Chronicle. His book Sacred Games was published by Hamish Hamilton in 1995, Penguin in 1996 and re-issued by Faber in 2011. He published Nine Love Letters with Quartet in 2016. He lives in London.

David wrote: "The author himself gives some historical (and nostalgic) context...


https://www.thejc.com/culture/feature..."

Thanks David - that's really interesting

Here's more from the author.....

On the origins of Pomeranski, by Gerald Jacobs

Both of my parents died in the second decade of the 21st century, my father at the end of 2011 and my mother at the end of 2016. My previous book, Nine Love Letters, came out just in time for my mother to hold it in her hands and glance through it. It was a special book for me — my first novel. Before then, I had written exclusively non-fiction.

All of this propelled me into the new, second novel, Pomeranski, set in a place and time — Brixton in the 1950s and ’60s — of which I have colourful and youthful memories. And, while it is a work of fiction in which all the principal characters are invented, the atmosphere is totally authentic.

For example, quite a few events within the plot of Pomeranski take place in, or emanate from, the ‘Excelsior’ shopping arcade. This is a lightly disguised version of an actual arcade in the heart of Brixton Market where my parents had a jewellery shop. But the novel’s main protagonist, Benny Pomeranski, and his wife, Bertha — who own a dress shop in the Excelsior — are not based on my father and mother.

Similarly, the characters with exotic nicknames — ‘Sam the Stick’, ‘Fancy Goods Harry’, ‘Spanish Joe’ etc — are derived from my own imagination but they clearly arrived there from memories of various real-life individuals in and around Brixton Market during my boyhood who were known by their nicknames.

Benny Pomeranski himself is known as ‘Benny the Fixer’ but also as ‘the Macher’ — a Yiddish word meaning ‘big shot’. And there is also Maxie the Ganoff — Yiddish for ‘thief’. Which again is authentic; in my memory, most of the arcade’s tradesmen were Jewish and the local banter was liberally threaded with Yiddish wisecracks, most of them denigratory.

In addition, there are roles at the fringe of things for real-life people as themselves, including Ruth Ellis, famously the last woman to be hanged in Britain after she had shot her then boyfriend outside a pub in Hampstead. And there is a brief walk-on part for a man calling himself Ras Prince Monolulu (almost certainly not his real name) who vividly, and indeed insistently imprinted himself on the memory. He claimed to be an Ethiopian prince with a Jewish wife back in Africa and he wandered around Brixton Market with his evocative call: ‘I gotta horse!’ He was a street racing tipster well before the legalisation of betting shops.

One of the book’s deeper themes is self-education and the diversion of moral intelligence into the unconventional and the illegal — the self-taught and the self-made. Another is the seemingly ingrained human motivation for revenge.

But these are not dealt with theoretically. All in Pomeranski is enacted — a major thread throughout the narrative is a passionate love affair; others include criminal rivalry, professional boxing, and the nature of Jewishness. There is also a significant Jamaican sub-plot and at least one murder.

SOURCE:
https://shinynewbooks.co.uk/on-the-or...

Thanks for the sleuthing, David & Nigel -- everything you turned up did the job of bolstering my interest in reading the book. I’ll wager that I order a copy within a week.

I’m reading it at the moment, and it’s pretty much as I’d been hoping it would be. Quite evocative, darkly funny, and you can tell that a lot of the details are straight from the author’s memory bank.

That's good to know. It sounds like a surefire winner

It’s keeping me on my toes with its episodic nature and flashbacks, but it’s very, very good so far.

An easy comparison might be the literary equivalent of Scorcese’s Mean Streets, set in a different decade and a different country. That’s no bad thing, as far as I’m concerned.

Interestingly, that particular comparison extends to the parallels and similarities -- culturally, familial, sociologically, experiential, etcet -- between Italian-Americans and British-Jews.

Sounds flipping wonderful Mark

It’s always a nice surprise when a bit of contemporary fiction hits all the right spots.

I finished the novel last night, and can now recommend it with confidence. My only complaint, really, is that most of the dialogue passages read a bit stiffly. Additionally, considering the characters and the era and the place, the dialogue should/could have been a whole hell of a lot richer in period slang -- and I could have done without the slang that was used being put into inverted commas and translated. Minor quibbles, though, as they didn’t diminish my enjoyment of a superb novel.

Thanks Mark. That's really helpful. I shall get hold of a copy and report back