Rare these days is the book that comes without a glowing endorsement on its cover and/or in its publicity material. Indeed, so regularly do some names crop up broadcasting the virtues of a new book or author that this is virtually their second career. So, when a grand literary eminence gives a rare and vigorous approbation to another author, it carries a good deal of weight. This is certainly the case with the endorser of Howard Jacobson’s novel The Act of Love, due out in September. No less a figure than the normally reclusive Harold Pinter describes Jacobson’s new offering as “naked, haunting, unflinching. Its account of sexual obsession is frightening, painful and finally very moving. A tour de force.” Those queues are probably already forming in the nation’s bookshops.
