Review
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"A satire in Swiftian vein, this is Howard Jacobson’s fifteenth novel and first hand grenade. If Trump’s
policy is to move fast and break things, then he has a competitor in Jacobson, who began Pussyv in the aftermath of
Trump’s election victory and completed well before Trump’s catastrophic failure to repeal Obamacare… It has all the
qualities of a fleet response: undigested rage, whip-smart wit devastating fluency and an as straight as an arrow…
This is the story, savagely well told by our greatest comic novelist, of how we got in the state we’re in." (Francis
Wilson Oldie)
"The pairing of author and subject sounds divinely ordained: The world’s smartest comic novelist vs. a TV reality star
who ran for president while bragging about his genitals." (Ron Charles Washington Post)
"There are many aesthetic pleasures to be had in Pussy. If Trump’s presidency is a source of continuing anxiety, then
among its very few benefits is that it has moved one of our finest comic writers to write an elegantly savage satire of
a man who defies satire." (Andrew Anthony Observer)
"Jacobson is… on target and deliciously laugh-aloud nasty about not just the making of this rough beast but what in the
American character enabled it to go slouching into the White House." (Jeffrey Burke Mail on Sunday)
"This is top-class comment writing, disguised in the form of a satirical jeu d’esprit… It is, to quote the title of
Jacobson’s own study of comedy, Seriously Funny." (Philip Collins The Times)
"Angry… In common with many a classic satire, Pussy is written as a fable… It’s all great fun… Jacobson is very good on
the nuances of the Trump phenomenon, both in terms of what’s alarming about it and why it has struck such a resonant
chord… And even if his book is unlikely to topple any governments, it may at least, as its author hopes, spread comfort
in some quarter and vexation in others." (Dan Brotzel UK Press Syndication)
"The book brilliantly portrays a world in which language and the complexity of ideas that it can convey has been
devalued… The novel hurtles breathlessly through a bildungsroman of the young prince from “baby celebrity” to idling
away his boyhood watching reality TV shows, to becoming a young man fantasising about prostitutes and being a Roman
emperor, to the moment he runs for election… Fascinating." (Anita Sethi i)
"For anyone thinking that Pussy is a comic novel, beware: the book is relentlessly unfunny. But this should not be taken
as a criticism; rather, re of just how creepily well realized and bleak Jacobson’s vision of the Trump
phenomenon turns out to be… It also captures, with chilling accuracy, the way Trumpism is a reflection of the
post-literate world we increasingly inhabit… Bullseye, Mr Jacobson. This is a novel that has much to say about how
Mussolinis like Trump coerce others into succumbing to their profoundly myopic, Manichaean world-view." (Douglas Kennedy
New Statesman)
"Howard Jacobson's reaction to the recent US election is viciously sharp, and almost too close to the to be funny…
After the result, Jacobson… churned out 50,000 lacerating words in the form of a fable, one filled to its margins with
viciously sharp humour and gossamer-thin allusions to reality… While delirious in its excoriations, Pussy can be hard to
laugh at at times as it is so on-the-nose, in much the same way many rock bands find This is Spinal Tap too accurate to
be outright comedy… A seething little nugget of a book." (Hilary A White Irish Independent)
"What immediately stands out is how different this is from most of Jacobson’s fiction. This is all-out political satire,
a punchy attack on President Trump… Fracassus is a Nero for our times. Monstrous. Larger than life. Jacobson captures
him with some excellent turns of phrase." (David Herman Jewish Chronicle)
About the Author
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Howard Jacobson has written fifteen novels and five works of non-fiction. He won the Bollinger Everyman
Wodehouse Award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize
for The Finkler Question and was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for his most recent novel, J.
