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| Howard Jacobson |
Live a Little by Howard Jacobson, review: A novel about love in old age penned with his trademark verbose flourishes
The Man Booker Prize-winning author of ‘The Finkler Question’ writes impressively about ninety-plus-year-olds, while indulging in wordplay and biting political commentary
Holy Baxter1 July 2019
Howard Jacobson’s Live a Little takes place during the final years of Beryl Dusinbery and Shimi Carmelli, both in their nineties, who meet outside a crematorium after Shimi’s brother’s funeral. Beryl, who spends her time embroidering morbid quotes from literature, is losing her memory; Shimi, on the other hand, is unable to forget anything that ever happened to him (and tormented by the fact). Shimi, a give-it-a-go cartomancer, predicts the future with a deck of cards in a Chinese restaurant every Friday; Beryl writes down her past on cards that she once used to report on her students. Shimi’s name was stolen by his older brother; Beryl has decided to abandon her own name in favour of the altogether more bizarre moniker Princess Schweppessodawasser.
Shimi is also known as the last man in north London who can do up his own flies, and pursued ferociously by the widows of Finchley Road because of this standalone quality. Beryl is dismissed by her self-absorbed politician sons as a bothersome, nasty old woman, left in the care of two recent immigrants, who she throws racist asides towards every few pages. Both are obsessed with death, which is staring them in the face. Both have made some terrible mistakes.
They make for a strange pair, and both are united by their disgust for humanity (Shimi’s visceral; Beryl’s personal.) Beryl has married too often and doesn’t believe in love; Shimi has never married. He is an introvert, easily embarrassed, obsessed with phrenology and the structure of the head, while she is a brash, extroverted linguist obsessed with categorizing words and correcting grammar.
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