The Act of Love: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Howard Jacobson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 17, 2009

'No man has ever loved a woman and not imagined her in the arms of someone else'. Felix Quinn calls himself a happy man. He owns one of London's oldest antiquarian bookshops. He is married to and adores the beautiful Marisa. But a childhood experience has taught him that loss is intrinsic to love, and Felix realizes that he can only be truly happy if his wife is sleeping with another man. Enter Marius into Marisa's affections. And now Felix must ask himself, is he really happy?

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In his naughtily erudite 10th novel, British author Jacobson (Kalooki Nights) explores the nature of the erotic with a wicked twist. Narrator Felix Quinn, a fusty antiquarian bookseller in contemporary London, wants to cuckold himself in order to save his marriage and give himself the freedom to be jealous. The unwitting but willing participant in Felix's scheme, Marius, is a libertine without scruples: he first appears in the tale some years previously, letching after two underage girls while attending the funeral of a man whose wife he had seduced. As for Felix's wife, Marisa, she embraces the infidelity foisted on her with gusto, relishing her thrice-weekly assignations and, after much persuasion, titillating her curious husband with details of their intimacies. Though Felix's narration is disconcertingly mannered, he's remarkably honest and blisteringly funny, while Jacobson's prose is sharp as ever, loaded with spiky dialogue and wonderfully arch observations. (Mar.)
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From Booklist

Antiquarian bookseller Felix Quinn is sophisticated, intelligent, and a proper English gentleman in all ways but one: he longs to see his wife, Marisa, in the arms of another man. When his masochistic matchmaking results in Marisa’s affair with a brooding writer, Felix is both tortured and tickled by their tryst—begging Marisa for details of their sexual encounters and obsessing over their interactions. Yet, like Philip Roth’s David Kepesh in The Dying Animal (2001), recently made into the feature film Elegy, Felix can never be satisfied unless he has Marisa to himself and, thus, becomes increasingly jealous and conflicted over his wife’s affair. The book is mostly concerned with Felix’s sexual fetishism and remains disappointingly reticent about the inner life of Marisa, who is meticulously described but barely allowed to speak. Jacobson conjures a twisted yet sophisticated love story here, walking a thin line between humor and erotica and often blending the two. --Heather Paulson

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (March 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141659423X
• ISBN-13: 978-1416594239
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,292,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

An award-winning writer and broadcaster, Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester, brought up in Prestwich and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield, and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied under F. R. Leavis. He lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His novels include The Mighty Walzer (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Kalooki Nights (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize) and, most recently, the highly acclaimed The Act of Love. Howard Jacobson lives in London.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Erotic, Exotic and Tedious, January 4, 2010

By 

Cary B. Barad (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Act of Love (Paperback)

An erotic, exotic and esoteric novel that deals with one man's fetish ad nauseaum. And it's not even a very prurient fetish. Lots of dialogue and litle action add up to a surfeit of tedium, although there is one brief account of a swingers'/fetishist club that piqued my curiosity.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I Can't Believe I Read the Whole Thing!, November 5, 2010

By 

Stephen Schwartz (Ithaca, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Act of Love: A Novel (Hardcover)

Actually this novel reminded me of Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth, but it's not nearly as entertaining, clever, or absorbing as Roth's masterpiece. Like Portnoy's Complaint The Act of Love is the compulsive first person narrative of a sex obsessed man. It is all about sex of a mildly "perverted" sort. Felix Quinn, after observing his wife's breasts being examined by a doctor, becomes obsessed with being cuckolded (his word) by her. He arranges by various subterfuges for Marisa, his wife, to have an affair with Marius, a rather unsavory character Felix has met at a funeral. Felix cogitates endlessly about his masochism, the sexual thrill of knowing his wife is with another man, how only with intense jealousy can one feel the intensity of love, and so on and on and on in this vein. Alas, I don't share Felix's, shall we say, "oddity," so a lot of this was lost on me.

But is Marisa really with another man? Felix's story or narrative has the feeling of fantasy. It seems to be a surreal twisting of Felix's imagination rather than the retelling of actual facts. The reader cannot tell what is the invention of Felix's overactive sexual cogitations or has genuine reality within the story world. The reader is absorbed by Felix's self-absorption, his quaint and orthogonal mental world. Well, I should say "not quite absorbed" in that I found it all a bit tiresome after awhile, and found myself reading faster and faster and savoring less and less. I guess I finished this novel despite my disinterest because I didn't have another book ready to hand. And one must have something to read mustn't one?

Unlike Portnoy, who is a nerd from Newark, New Jersey, Felix and Marisa are sophisticated and rich Londoners who live in Marylebone. I guess another reason I stuck with it is that I like novels about contemporary London. This one almost comes up to the bar in that sense.

Jacobson is a word master. Too bad his talent is wasted on Felix Quinn.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars masochism isn't pretty, September 27, 2009

By 

Katherine "reader for the joy of reading" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Act of Love: A Novel (Hardcover)

there are moments in this book, sentences, and passages, that ring true. This, and the fact that the language of the book is well crafted, makes the book enjoyable. However, masochism is gratingly one-sided (i felt the same reading sacher-masoch decades ago). A better, less standard masochistic novel would have given voice to the other side, the other sides. another flaw is that there is no sex to speak of; the author holds back on sex but i think if it's gonna be about sex it's gotta have sex in the book.