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 & no one 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 school-friend & rival Osmond ' Hovis' Belkin, currently enjoying a spectacularly successful career in Hollywood, his tragic great aunt Marghanita for whom Henry once entertained a dangerous passion, & his father Izzi Nagel, upholsterer turned illusionist, fire-eater & 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, & Moira, the waitress with the crooked smile & custard hair who serves him cake & cappuccino, seems to want him. Kicking & screaming every inch of the way, Henry realises he might finally be falling in love. Will love be the making of Henry? Or will walking his neighbour's dog?
Tender, funny & 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, & above all, it adds a new warmth to his reputation as the most exhilaratingly intelligent of contemporary novelists.