Mother’s Boy: A Writer’s Beginnings by Howard Jacobson

JONATHAN CAPE, £18.99 (EBOOK £9.99) REVIEW BY LUKE O’REILLY

Howard Jacobson’s Mother’s Boy is a laughout-loud funny, yet sentimental, memoir from the prolific 79-year-old – who has written a book roughly every two years since his first novel Coming From Behind was published aged 40. Jacobson was born into a working class Jewish family in Manchester in the 1940s. The book details his close relationship with his mother, who supported his ambitions to become a writer, as well as his difficult relationship with his father. Like all great memoirs, Mother’s Boy is equal parts acerbic, tender, and indiscreet. Jacobson’s comic turn of phrase rarely disappoints, and there are laughs on almost every page.