The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson

How quickly does one fall in love?

If this book had been a woman, by this time, I would have sworn my undying love for her and beseeched her to marry me.

I bought the book not because it won the Booker (although I did cultivate that fetish once) but mostly since it had the tone of melancholy, wicked humour and intelligent people, all of which I had liked in Amsterdam, another book I like more than most people who like McEwan otherwise. And I haven't found a book since, that had that tone. But this one does.

Sample these lines and assume that you are having a conversation with someone intelligent...How can you not love it?

-> The BBC, Treslove believed, made addicts of those who listened to it ... As it did those it employed...Only worse in the case of those it employed - handcuffing them in promotions and conceit, disabling them from any other life. Treslove himself a case in point. Though not promoted, only disabled.

or

->On finishing his studies, on account of no one at the university being certain how many modules made a totality - Treslove found himself with a degree so unspecific that all he could do was accept a graduate traineeship at the BBC.

or

->Don't I look after you when you're ill? You do, You're marvellous to me when I'm ill. It's when I'm well that you're no use.

And all this in the first 12 pages of a 370 page book!

So finally I have a book that I shall perhaps read all the way and finish merrily. And yes, you should read this book too.