The Making of Henry

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.

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.

Author Bio:Howard Jacobson is the author of seven novels and four works of non-fiction. He won the Everyman Wodehouse Award for comic writing in 1999 for The Mighty Walzer.

Kirkus Reviews

Jacobson's turgid eighth outing tells you more than you ever wanted to know about the life of a retired university lecturer. Henry Nagel, pushing 60, has recently moved to a posh London neighborhood after a lifetime in the North of England. He has come into possession of a fancy apartment, which, he speculates, belonged to his father's mistress, both now deceased. A timid soul, Henry is preparing for death without having lived a life, and Jacobson walks us through some big moments in Henry's story, starting with his birth on Christmas Day in a Manchester nursing-home. We squirm with Henry as he gets into trouble for not bringing home the change from the grocery store and wince with Henry as a schoolboy when someone calls him a girl (oh, Jacobson loves the name "Henry" to death). Not that Henry had a hard childhood: He was cosseted by his doting Jewish parents. If Henry grew up afraid of his own shadow, it wasn't the fault of his father, Izzi, a magician and fire-eater who believed in fun times. And his great-aunt Marghanita embodied "the unutterable voluptuousness of family." Though Henry loved having women in his life, he couldn't handle the responsibility of a relationship, so he "borrowed" the wives of colleagues at his obscure university, where his career never took off (we get some feeble satirical swipes at "radical feminists"). Finally, in London, he meets Moira, the lively owner of a local patisserie, who gets Henry to lighten up. Might he be ready for the first-ever mature relationship? Can life begin at 60? Will Jacobson (The Very Model of a Man, 1994, etc.) deliver the goods? Well, no, he'll leave us hanging. Answers are delayed as Henry discovers it was his mother, not hisfather, who had the secret life, plunging him into another round of speculation about the past. All this, and walking the neighbor's dog (a major production), elbows out his romance with Moira. Unproductive navel-gazing. Agent: Jonny Geller/Curtis Brown

Howard Jacobson is the author of four works of nonfiction and several novels, including The Finkler Question, which won the Man Booker Prize; The Mighty Walzer, which won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award for comic writing; and Who's Sorry Now?, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize. He has a weekly column for The Independent and regularly reviews and writes for The Guardian, The Times, and The Evening Standard. Jacobson has also done several specials for British television. He lives in London.