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

I was totally absorbed at every stage. . . It is a joy to read. . . I believe it will become a classic.

Melvyn Bragg

This memoir, at once hilarious and poignant, braids together a brilliant stand-up comedian's depiction of a Jewish child's coming-of age in mid-20th-century England with a subtle, nuanced account of the growth of a novelist's mind. Crafted in a vivid, resourceful English in which Yiddish repeatedly surfaces as the mot juste, Mother's Boy is a thrilling book, full of tenderness, rage, and sharp intelligence.

Stephen Greenblatt

Exquisite elegance... Few Jewish writers, except possibly for Isaac Bashevis Singer or Bernard Malamud, document so well the paradoxes of Jewish life in a Western society.

Steven Berkoff

Laugh-out-loud glorious and uproarious of course - but don't let the self-ribbing fool you; this is deep and poignant.

Simon Schama

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

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

[A] brilliantly funny memoir.

Kathryn Hughes, Sunday Times

[An] enjoyable memoir...[Jacobson] makes a powerful case for a wider and deeper array of Jewish stories.

Moshenska, Observer

Instantly engaging and sublimely intelligent.

Prospect

Moving... at the end of the book in a breathtaking scene, one of the best Jacobson has written.

David Herman, Jewish Chronicle

Side-splittingly funny and serious, too, Howard Jacobson has written one of the all-time great memoirs.

Nicholas Lezard, Daily Telegraph

The vivid prose and comic episodes make the book a marvellously entertaining read throughout.

Andrew Rosenhein, Tablet

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

A laugh-out-loud funny, yet sentimental, memoir... Like all great memoirs, Mother's Boy is equal parts acerbic, tender, and indiscreet.

UK Press Syndication

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

It is said that fiction writers' autobiographies reveal much less about themselves than their fiction does. But this is certainly not the case with Howard Jacobson. Be it in Manchester or Melbourne, Cambridge or London, his recollections are forensic. In Mother's Boy, he has exposed his family, his faults and his failings. And it is still funny.

Gerald Jacobs, Critic

This memoir, full of the bittersweet and the humorous, relates vividly, touchingly, and often self-flagellatingly his [Jacobson's] experiences of childhood...school...jobs...and, along the way, two marriages.

New Statesman

[A] wonderfully funny, moving memoir.

Daily Telegraph, *Summer Reads of 2022*

A wisecracking memoir about growing up in Jewish working-class Manchester.

Daily Telegraph, *Books of the Year*