Mother's Boy

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 *