Mother's Boy
A Writer's Beginnings
Published on 16. March 2023
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-1-5291-1567-3 (ISBN)
Description
'One of the all-time great memoirs' Daily Telegraph
'Wonderful...candid, shrewd and moving' William Boyd
'Laugh-out-loud glorious and uproarious' Simon Schama
Howard Jacobson's funny, revealing and tender memoir of his path to becoming a writer.
Howard Jacobson was forty when his first novel was published. In Mother's Boy, he traces the life that brought him there. Born into a working-class Jewish family in 1940s Manchester, he did not lack encouragement or subject matter. Jacobson takes us from childhood and studying at Cambridge, through landing in Sydney as a maverick young professor, and on to his first marriage and the birth of his son. Later, he begins new - and often surprising - ventures in places as disparate as London, Wolverhampton, Boscastle and Melbourne.
Infused with bittersweet memories of Jacobson's parents and friends, this is the story of a writer's beginnings, and of learning to understand who you are before you can become the writer you were meant to be.
'Hilariously brilliant' David Baddiel
'Howard Jacobson brilliantly transforms calamity into rip-roaring comedy' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday
'Wonderful...candid, shrewd and moving' William Boyd
'Laugh-out-loud glorious and uproarious' Simon Schama
Howard Jacobson's funny, revealing and tender memoir of his path to becoming a writer.
Howard Jacobson was forty when his first novel was published. In Mother's Boy, he traces the life that brought him there. Born into a working-class Jewish family in 1940s Manchester, he did not lack encouragement or subject matter. Jacobson takes us from childhood and studying at Cambridge, through landing in Sydney as a maverick young professor, and on to his first marriage and the birth of his son. Later, he begins new - and often surprising - ventures in places as disparate as London, Wolverhampton, Boscastle and Melbourne.
Infused with bittersweet memories of Jacobson's parents and friends, this is the story of a writer's beginnings, and of learning to understand who you are before you can become the writer you were meant to be.
'Hilariously brilliant' David Baddiel
'Howard Jacobson brilliantly transforms calamity into rip-roaring comedy' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday
Reviews / Votes
A wonderful memoir, written with great linguistic brio. Candid, shrewd and moving - a classic of its kind. -- William Boyd Howard Jacobson has always been hilariously brilliant at writing fictional versions of his life. He can, it turns out, also tell the real story with all that brilliance and hilarity, with the added gain for the reader of finding out what - and who - made him that writer. -- David Baddiel Side-splittingly funny and serious, too, Howard Jacobson has written one of the all-time great memoirs. -- Nicholas Lezard * Daily Telegraph * Mother's Boy is a synthesis of his life's work...as well as an original story... it is every bit as funny. -- Toby Lichtig * Times Literary Supplement * Laugh-out-loud glorious and uproarious of course - but don't let the self-ribbing fool you; this is deep and poignant. -- Simon Schama [A] brilliantly funny memoir. -- Kathryn Hughes * Sunday Times * Mining down to the roots of his creativity, Mother's Boy is very funny, profoundly serious and demonically fluent. If there is a better contemporary account of the cost of becoming a writer, I've yet to read it * Spectator * Howard Jacobson meticulously chronicles his lifetime of failures. But with the rat-a-tat-tat delivery of a great stand-up, he brilliantly transforms calamity into rip-roaring comedy. -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday * Pure delight. Witty, sometimes acid observations jostle with tender reminiscences and enduringly wise insights into what it is to be a Jew, a man, a human being. Its joys help explain why Howard Jacobson is rightly regarded as one of Britain's very greatest writers. -- Jonathan Freedland Utterly captivating... behind the comical grandiosity of Mother's Boy, there is a sense of something much graver and more sombre, to do with...lifelong struggle. -- Alex Clark * Guardian *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 195 mm
Width: 128 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
234 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5291-1567-3 (9781529115673)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
03/2022
Vintage Digital
€9.49
Available for download
Person
Howard Jacobson has written eighteen novels and six works of non-fiction. He won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question; he was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for J.