The Act of Love - Hardcover

Jacobson, Howard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 141659423X ISBN 13: 9781416594239

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2009

Synopsis

In a dual tale that contrasts an antique bookstore owner's sexually obsessive marriage with a literary romance found on the shelves of his store, Felix Quinn becomes so enamored of his wife that he allows her to conduct an affair with another man. By the author of the Mighty Walzer.

About this title

Review:

`The... narrative is masterly. Entertaining as well as erudite, it prompts reflections upon art, obsession, masculinity, betrayal and the nature of the erotic... In The Act of Love, Felix Quinn's judicious and witty mining of literary tradition for the legacy of the dead serves above all to confirm his creator's mighty individual talent. There surely cannot be a more vigorously intelligent novelist than Howard Jacobson writing in this country today.'

Review:

`on the whole it's an impressively sustained, and unusually intense, literary experiment'

'In this anti-hero, Jacobson has created a disturbed amoral creature as worthy of pity as of outrage. That the female reader does not end up loathing him is this novel's true surprise - and final triumph... A gloriously literary, highly wrought narrative as darkly transgressive, as savage in its brilliance, as anything Jacobson has written.'

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 141659423X
• ISBN 13: 9781416594239
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 333