Marvin Kreitman and Charlie Merriweather are old friends, despite being very different characters, which creates some occasional friction between them but on the other hand provides some rich material for a comic novel. Charlie is a slightly posh, tall, bumbling, generally pleasant sort of chap, who makes a fairly comfortable living from writing children's books in collaboration with his wife, confusingly also called Charlie. Marvin, on the other hand, is shorter, chronically and serially unfaithful to his wife Hazel, extravagantly Jewish (as befits a fairly transparent authorial alter ego) and also the pretty successful owner of a handbag and general leather goods business.
Charlie is experiencing a bit of middle-aged restlessness after twenty years of marriage to Charlie (who people seem to call Chas to distinguish her from her husband) and the raising of two grown-up children. He's still in love with his wife, and they still have nice albeit occasional sex, but he craves something a bit more...exciting? transgressive? dangerous? Moreover he feels like his old friend Marvin is a bit of an authority on excitement, transgression, danger, and (to put it more bluntly) facilitating sex with people whom you're not married to.
The conversation has just taken a bit of a left turn into Charlie suggesting that Marvin let him have a go on Hazel when, as they stagger out into the Soho night, Marvin is run down and hospitalised by a cycle messenger.
No permanent physical damage, fortunately, but Kreitman has doctor's orders to do a bit of rest and recuperation and so arranges some time off in a hotel on the edge of Dartmoor, where he and Hazel are soon joined by the Charlies. Strange things soon start to happen - Kreitman's cycling assailant, Nyman, an odd and enigmatic character who seems to exert a strange pull on everyone, also turns up and soon has Chas exerting a "strange pull" on him by giving him a furtive handjob in the hotel garden. Meanwhile Hazel and Charlie seem to have disappeared. Where can they be?
And so a new routine is settled into - Charlie and Hazel blissfully entwined while Kreitman, after a period of solitary moping, manages to persuade Chas into some sort of reciprocal arrangement. So after a bit of a lumpy period facilitating the swap and getting used to the new normal, everyone's happy, right? Weeeeeelll, up to a point: once Charlie's initial transgressive thrill has worn off he finds himself settling into the same routine of occasional nice sex with Hazel but without the satisfying working relationship and the twenty-odd years of shared experience that he had with Chas. So, perhaps she'd like to swap back? But where does this leave Kreitman and Hazel?
As I said here and here I read a few of Howard Jacobson's early novels (in particular Coming From Behind, Peeping Tom and Redback) quite a long time ago and remain of the opinion that they are his best work, for all that Who's Sorry Now? is fine and has some sly things to say about male-female relations in general and long-standing marriages in particular. There are some odd things, though: the Nyman character's odd sexual fascination to everyone is never adequately explained, and his sudden turn into an abusive girlfriend-beater at the end of the book is a bit jarring. It's nice that the novel avoids the easy way out of having Kreitman and Hazel get back together, but the specific circumstances are a bit odd: first the thing with Nyman beating up Kreitman's daughter Juliet, and then the even more bizarre business in the last chapter where Kreitman punishes himself by visiting a dominatrix and having his balls squeezed. It's as if the novel is hijacked by a different author for the last couple of chapters who just stomps on the gas and drives it wildly off the rails. There does also seem to be a dearth of characters who behave like actual real humans in a way that might make you warm to them; Hazel comes closest, which I suppose is what makes her defiant rejection of a nice cosy reconciliation with Kreitman at the end quite pleasing.
So it's funny, occasionally perceptive and highly readable throughout, but I still maintain that the first few books are the best. John Crace's Digested Reads version can be found here.
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