Much more than the story it sets out to interpret., 27 Mar 2008
In After These things Jenny Diski accomplishes an almost impossible task. She starts with a well known story, and thus a plot ready declared, a story that claims history and yet is read as myth. She reworks it, gives shape, form and thought to characters we think we might already know, and then puts words in their mouths. She finally presents the whole as an original work, a novel of deception, love and the intricacies of family life in a culture now perceived as alien. And she succeeds brilliantly, creating a new experience in a new world for the reader within a familiarity that her approach reinterprets.

After These Things is born of the Old Testament. Abraham and Isaac, then Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah and finally Joseph and his half brothers, all face one another in head-to-head rivalry. There is trickery and deception, bullying and exploitation, politics and self-interest. Individual battles are fought, private wars are waged, all in the name of family. For instance, Jacob profits through his trickery, but is later himself the victim of Leah's coup. And so within each rivalry there are characters with stratagems, strategies and aims, goals that are often justified via claims to occupying a special position in relation to God. And yet all the characters have to live with the consequences of their individual ruthlessness. Together they pursue individual goals that eventually add up to a dynastic success, but perhaps not for any of the reasons that they themselves planned.

And After These Things thus grows into a finely-drawn psychological thriller and political intrigue. Characters whose interests coincide cooperate, albeit often only pragmatically, despite their partners' clearly stated and obvious cultural and religious differences. A tangled web of deceit, compromise, antagonism and truce eventually casts Jacob as the successful instigator of a bloodline, despite its having been constructed via four separate mothers, two of them wives and two others their maids, and all of them in conflict. He experiences true love only with the wife he does not himself love, and then refuses to countenance repeating the emotion. But she provides him with the children he needs to secure his ambition. His true love, meanwhile, does not conceive and becomes so racked with self-doubt and destructive jealousy that she can express little feeling and certainly no love for her husband. Thus Jenny Diski achieves her own goal of creating drama out of a well-known story and thereby creates characters that are rounded, real people, their obvious humanity belying their myth.

What she does not do is attempt to generate a sense or feeling of place. Though we travel with the semi-nomadic action and live alongside shepherds and specialist livestock breeders, we are never allowed to taste the foods they eat, smell the homesteads they inhabit, or walk the hills, deserts or plains with them. Jenny Diski keeps us within their minds, their motives and their fears.

This is not a shortcoming of After These Things, merely an observation of a limit the author no doubt consciously placed on its scope. After These Things is already a novel with breadth of story and depth of analysis. To have made it also a descriptive, deliberately sensory portrayal of a time and place would have been a gargantuan and ultimately self-destructive task. It would have detracted from the books focus on human relationships and also, crucially, sited the events in a particular time and place, thus undermining their continued mythical status. And when confronted with an editor who must keep pace and plot in place, it was probably a potential aspect of the book that had to give. After all, in the end there is always the Great Editor, the one true opinion that demands both first and last word. calls the tune, pays the piper and laughs last.

And so via an Old Testament myth presented as history, or even vice-versa, Jenny Diski creates a thoroughly modern drama of relationships, ambitions, resentment and fulfilment. Driven people do things they feel are demanded of them both by history and identity. And everything is underpinned by an eventual morality and justice, a restatement of human failing and vulnerability. He who tricks his way to wealth is himself tricked into marriage and then, at last, by his own sons, who themselves resent the favouritism bestowed on a brother. They offer the father the son's bloodstained coat of many colours and thus, in their own way, get their own way. Some things do not change, cannot be edited.


Dustwrapper Blurb, 13 Jan 2006
'After These Things' is an account of the relationship between Abraham's tragic son Isaac and Isaac's son Jacob. The book follows the psychological trail of the children of Abraham, the first properly constituted family, and finds that, like all families, their story is one of wishes and fears. In Isaac and Jacob's relationship we see all the complexities of love, power and desire that make them quintessentially human.

The inimitable Jenny Diski tells this ancient story anew, with the delicious subversive wit and intelligence readers have come to expect from this wonderfully surprising writer.

Much more than the story it sets out to interpret., 27 Mar 2008
In After These things Jenny Diski accomplishes an almost impossible task. She starts with a well known story, and thus a plot ready declared, a story that claims history and yet is read as myth. She reworks it, gives shape, form and thought to characters we think we might already know, and then puts words in their mouths. She finally presents the whole as an original work, a novel of deception, love and the intricacies of family life in a culture now perceived as alien. And she succeeds brilliantly, creating a new experience in a new world for the reader within a familiarity that her approach reinterprets.

After These Things is born of the Old Testament. Abraham and Isaac, then Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah and finally Joseph and his half brothers, all face one another in head-to-head rivalry. There is trickery and deception, bullying and exploitation, politics and self-interest. Individual battles are fought, private wars are waged, all in the name of family. For instance, Jacob profits through his trickery, but is later himself the victim of Leah's coup. And so within each rivalry there are characters with stratagems, strategies and aims, goals that are often justified via claims to occupying a special position in relation to God. And yet all the characters have to live with the consequences of their individual ruthlessness. Together they pursue individual goals that eventually add up to a dynastic success, but perhaps not for any of the reasons that they themselves planned.

And After These Things thus grows into a finely-drawn psychological thriller and political intrigue. Characters whose interests coincide cooperate, albeit often only pragmatically, despite their partners' clearly stated and obvious cultural and religious differences. A tangled web of deceit, compromise, antagonism and truce eventually casts Jacob as the successful instigator of a bloodline, despite its having been constructed via four separate mothers, two of them wives and two others their maids, and all of them in conflict. He experiences true love only with the wife he does not himself love, and then refuses to countenance repeating the emotion. But she provides him with the children he needs to secure his ambition. His true love, meanwhile, does not conceive and becomes so racked with self-doubt and destructive jealousy that she can express little feeling and certainly no love for her husband. Thus Jenny Diski achieves her own goal of creating drama out of a well-known story and thereby creates characters that are rounded, real people, their obvious humanity belying their myth.

What she does not do is attempt to generate a sense or feeling of place. Though we travel with the semi-nomadic action and live alongside shepherds and specialist livestock breeders, we are never allowed to taste the foods they eat, smell the homesteads they inhabit, or walk the hills, deserts or plains with them. Jenny Diski keeps us within their minds, their motives and their fears.

This is not a shortcoming of After These Things, merely an observation of a limit the author no doubt consciously placed on its scope. After These Things is already a novel with breadth of story and depth of analysis. To have made it also a descriptive, deliberately sensory portrayal of a time and place would have been a gargantuan and ultimately self-destructive task. It would have detracted from the books focus on human relationships and also, crucially, sited the events in a particular time and place, thus undermining their continued mythical status. And when confronted with an editor who must keep pace and plot in place, it was probably a potential aspect of the book that had to give. After all, in the end there is always the Great Editor, the one true opinion that demands both first and last word. calls the tune, pays the piper and laughs last.

And so via an Old Testament myth presented as history, or even vice-versa, Jenny Diski creates a thoroughly modern drama of relationships, ambitions, resentment and fulfilment. Driven people do things they feel are demanded of them both by history and identity. And everything is underpinned by an eventual morality and justice, a restatement of human failing and vulnerability. He who tricks his way to wealth is himself tricked into marriage and then, at last, by his own sons, who themselves resent the favouritism bestowed on a brother. They offer the father the son's bloodstained coat of many colours and thus, in their own way, get their own way. Some things do not change, cannot be edited.


Dustwrapper Blurb, 13 Jan 2006
'After These Things' is an account of the relationship between Abraham's tragic son Isaac and Isaac's son Jacob. The book follows the psychological trail of the children of Abraham, the first properly constituted family, and finds that, like all families, their story is one of wishes and fears. In Isaac and Jacob's relationship we see all the complexities of love, power and desire that make them quintessentially human.

The inimitable Jenny Diski tells this ancient story anew, with the delicious subversive wit and intelligence readers have come to expect from this wonderfully surprising writer.

Compelling reading and wonderful character development, 04 Sep 2006
I found this to be a powerful book that delved deeply into the life of a woman named Rachel who becomes involved in a sadomasochistic relationship with an emotionally distant man. Initially I felt the title referred to this s&m relationship. However, as the author reveals more of Rachel's life, it appears that there is nothing natural in her emotionally starved world. Her parents fought bitterly when she was a child. She struggles with paralyzing spells of depression and is incapable of emotional closeness. She is delightfully articulate and quick witted - an intelligent woman with a large share of emotional distress. We watch her spiraling deeper into a suicidal state and it takes a strong reader to maintain compassion. Finally her darkest hour passes, and the novel ends with her first steps towards a healthier self concept. Compelling reading and wonderful character development - a great first novel.

A dismal portrait of destructive collusion, 23 Aug 2003
I came upon this book by chance as it was part of a promotional display at my local library. I then made the unforgivable mistake of being lured into a book by the appearance of its cover.

The novel centres around the collusive sado-masochistic relationship between Rachel the main character and Joshua, a faceless individual about whom very little is revealed. I have to say I found the book unremittingly depressing. I turned the pages in vain hoping to find a glimmer of light, some redeeming feature of Rachel's personality which would lift the novel from the dreary and mundane: but no - she appeared to be a truly damaged personality with little hope of repair. I found the thread of the novel quite disjointed at times; the tone changing from a light magazine-style to some heavy, self-indulgent passages with whole-page paragraphs. Also I could not see how the section dealing with her quite different kind of relationship to Pete fitted into the overall theme of the novel: it seemed like a section from another kind of book altogether had been pasted in - it just did not seem to link up in any way.

At no time in the novel did I really see Rachel as a victim: the relationship though bizarre and often causing her pain was clearly as much under her control as his: it was plainly collusive. As the novel progressed I was intrigued to find out how Rachel would manage to maintain such a tightly controlled relationship while mentally she was so unbalanced. She was clearly terrified of intimacy and commitment of any kind and always sought the safety and refuge of her own company.

I found the farcical resolution to the novel disappointing and taking away what little hope I had left for Rachel. All in all a pretty gloomy read.

More complex than kinky sex, 28 May 2003
I read this as an interested participant in submissive sexual practices and although it was easy to read I found it disappointing on several scores. Firstly, the hype which Rachel's relationship with Joshua caused in all previous reviews completely blanks out the significant relationship she develops with Pete who she is teaching. Further, while submission is truly addictive this is not that well documented or explored. Lastly I could see no reasons why anyone would submit to Joshua Ableman - he has no features at all as outlined in the book, and certainly none of the features I would expect to see in any dominant partner of mine. Thank goodness we are all different.

Much more than the story it sets out to interpret., 27 Mar 2008
In After These things Jenny Diski accomplishes an almost impossible task. She starts with a well known story, and thus a plot ready declared, a story that claims history and yet is read as myth. She reworks it, gives shape, form and thought to characters we think we might already know, and then puts words in their mouths. She finally presents the whole as an original work, a novel of deception, love and the intricacies of family life in a culture now perceived as alien. And she succeeds brilliantly, creating a new experience in a new world for the reader within a familiarity that her approach reinterprets.

After These Things is born of the Old Testament. Abraham and Isaac, then Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah and finally Joseph and his half brothers, all face one another in head-to-head rivalry. There is trickery and deception, bullying and exploitation, politics and self-interest. Individual battles are fought, private wars are waged, all in the name of family. For instance, Jacob profits through his trickery, but is later himself the victim of Leah's coup. And so within each rivalry there are characters with stratagems, strategies and aims, goals that are often justified via claims to occupying a special position in relation to God. And yet all the characters have to live with the consequences of their individual ruthlessness. Together they pursue individual goals that eventually add up to a dynastic success, but perhaps not for any of the reasons that they themselves planned.

And After These Things thus grows into a finely-drawn psychological thriller and political intrigue. Characters whose interests coincide cooperate, albeit often only pragmatically, despite their partners' clearly stated and obvious cultural and religious differences. A tangled web of deceit, compromise, antagonism and truce eventually casts Jacob as the successful instigator of a bloodline, despite its having been constructed via four separate mothers, two of them wives and two others their maids, and all of them in conflict. He experiences true love only with the wife he does not himself love, and then refuses to countenance repeating the emotion. But she provides him with the children he needs to secure his ambition. His true love, meanwhile, does not conceive and becomes so racked with self-doubt and destructive jealousy that she can express little feeling and certainly no love for her husband. Thus Jenny Diski achieves her own goal of creating drama out of a well-known story and thereby creates characters that are rounded, real people, their obvious humanity belying their myth.

What she does not do is attempt to generate a sense or feeling of place. Though we travel with the semi-nomadic action and live alongside shepherds and specialist livestock breeders, we are never allowed to taste the foods they eat, smell the homesteads they inhabit, or walk the hills, deserts or plains with them. Jenny Diski keeps us within their minds, their motives and their fears.

This is not a shortcoming of After These Things, merely an observation of a limit the author no doubt consciously placed on its scope. After These Things is already a novel with breadth of story and depth of analysis. To have made it also a descriptive, deliberately sensory portrayal of a time and place would have been a gargantuan and ultimately self-destructive task. It would have detracted from the books focus on human relationships and also, crucially, sited the events in a particular time and place, thus undermining their continued mythical status. And when confronted with an editor who must keep pace and plot in place, it was probably a potential aspect of the book that had to give. After all, in the end there is always the Great Editor, the one true opinion that demands both first and last word. calls the tune, pays the piper and laughs last.

And so via an Old Testament myth presented as history, or even vice-versa, Jenny Diski creates a thoroughly modern drama of relationships, ambitions, resentment and fulfilment. Driven people do things they feel are demanded of them both by history and identity. And everything is underpinned by an eventual morality and justice, a restatement of human failing and vulnerability. He who tricks his way to wealth is himself tricked into marriage and then, at last, by his own sons, who themselves resent the favouritism bestowed on a brother. They offer the father the son's bloodstained coat of many colours and thus, in their own way, get their own way. Some things do not change, cannot be edited.


Dustwrapper Blurb, 13 Jan 2006
'After These Things' is an account of the relationship between Abraham's tragic son Isaac and Isaac's son Jacob. The book follows the psychological trail of the children of Abraham, the first properly constituted family, and finds that, like all families, their story is one of wishes and fears. In Isaac and Jacob's relationship we see all the complexities of love, power and desire that make them quintessentially human.

The inimitable Jenny Diski tells this ancient story anew, with the delicious subversive wit and intelligence readers have come to expect from this wonderfully surprising writer.

Compelling reading and wonderful character development, 04 Sep 2006
I found this to be a powerful book that delved deeply into the life of a woman named Rachel who becomes involved in a sadomasochistic relationship with an emotionally distant man. Initially I felt the title referred to this s&m relationship. However, as the author reveals more of Rachel's life, it appears that there is nothing natural in her emotionally starved world. Her parents fought bitterly when she was a child. She struggles with paralyzing spells of depression and is incapable of emotional closeness. She is delightfully articulate and quick witted - an intelligent woman with a large share of emotional distress. We watch her spiraling deeper into a suicidal state and it takes a strong reader to maintain compassion. Finally her darkest hour passes, and the novel ends with her first steps towards a healthier self concept. Compelling reading and wonderful character development - a great first novel.

A dismal portrait of destructive collusion, 23 Aug 2003
I came upon this book by chance as it was part of a promotional display at my local library. I then made the unforgivable mistake of being lured into a book by the appearance of its cover.

The novel centres around the collusive sado-masochistic relationship between Rachel the main character and Joshua, a faceless individual about whom very little is revealed. I have to say I found the book unremittingly depressing. I turned the pages in vain hoping to find a glimmer of light, some redeeming feature of Rachel's personality which would lift the novel from the dreary and mundane: but no - she appeared to be a truly damaged personality with little hope of repair. I found the thread of the novel quite disjointed at times; the tone changing from a light magazine-style to some heavy, self-indulgent passages with whole-page paragraphs. Also I could not see how the section dealing with her quite different kind of relationship to Pete fitted into the overall theme of the novel: it seemed like a section from another kind of book altogether had been pasted in - it just did not seem to link up in any way.

At no time in the novel did I really see Rachel as a victim: the relationship though bizarre and often causing her pain was clearly as much under her control as his: it was plainly collusive. As the novel progressed I was intrigued to find out how Rachel would manage to maintain such a tightly controlled relationship while mentally she was so unbalanced. She was clearly terrified of intimacy and commitment of any kind and always sought the safety and refuge of her own company.

I found the farcical resolution to the novel disappointing and taking away what little hope I had left for Rachel. All in all a pretty gloomy read.

More complex than kinky sex, 28 May 2003
I read this as an interested participant in submissive sexual practices and although it was easy to read I found it disappointing on several scores. Firstly, the hype which Rachel's relationship with Joshua caused in all previous reviews completely blanks out the significant relationship she develops with Pete who she is teaching. Further, while submission is truly addictive this is not that well documented or explored. Lastly I could see no reasons why anyone would submit to Joshua Ableman - he has no features at all as outlined in the book, and certainly none of the features I would expect to see in any dominant partner of mine. Thank goodness we are all different.

DON'T...miss reading this book :o), 19 Oct 2001
DON'T is a collection of reviews jenny diski wrote mostly for the London Review of Books...
people who already know her works DON'T have to be afraid to get disappointed here...still the same astonishing way of writing, surpising the readers and - best of all - her amazing humour!!! those who DON'T know jenny diski, yet, should really get to read this...especially her review of dolly parton's autobiography! *LMAO* ;o)

Much more than the story it sets out to interpret., 27 Mar 2008
In After These things Jenny Diski accomplishes an almost impossible task. She starts with a well known story, and thus a plot ready declared, a story that claims history and yet is read as myth. She reworks it, gives shape, form and thought to characters we think we might already know, and then puts words in their mouths. She finally presents the whole as an original work, a novel of deception, love and the intricacies of family life in a culture now perceived as alien. And she succeeds brilliantly, creating a new experience in a new world for the reader within a familiarity that her approach reinterprets.

After These Things is born of the Old Testament. Abraham and Isaac, then Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah and finally Joseph and his half brothers, all face one another in head-to-head rivalry. There is trickery and deception, bullying and exploitation, politics and self-interest. Individual battles are fought, private wars are waged, all in the name of family. For instance, Jacob profits through his trickery, but is later himself the victim of Leah's coup. And so within each rivalry there are characters with stratagems, strategies and aims, goals that are often justified via claims to occupying a special position in relation to God. And yet all the characters have to live with the consequences of their individual ruthlessness. Together they pursue individual goals that eventually add up to a dynastic success, but perhaps not for any of the reasons that they themselves planned.

And After These Things thus grows into a finely-drawn psychological thriller and political intrigue. Characters whose interests coincide cooperate, albeit often only pragmatically, despite their partners' clearly stated and obvious cultural and religious differences. A tangled web of deceit, compromise, antagonism and truce eventually casts Jacob as the successful instigator of a bloodline, despite its having been constructed via four separate mothers, two of them wives and two others their maids, and all of them in conflict. He experiences true love only with the wife he does not himself love, and then refuses to countenance repeating the emotion. But she provides him with the children he needs to secure his ambition. His true love, meanwhile, does not conceive and becomes so racked with self-doubt and destructive jealousy that she can express little feeling and certainly no love for her husband. Thus Jenny Diski achieves her own goal of creating drama out of a well-known story and thereby creates characters that are rounded, real people, their obvious humanity belying their myth.

What she does not do is attempt to generate a sense or feeling of place. Though we travel with the semi-nomadic action and live alongside shepherds and specialist livestock breeders, we are never allowed to taste the foods they eat, smell the homesteads they inhabit, or walk the hills, deserts or plains with them. Jenny Diski keeps us within their minds, their motives and their fears.

This is not a shortcoming of After These Things, merely an observation of a limit the author no doubt consciously placed on its scope. After These Things is already a novel with breadth of story and depth of analysis. To have made it also a descriptive, deliberately sensory portrayal of a time and place would have been a gargantuan and ultimately self-destructive task. It would have detracted from the books focus on human relationships and also, crucially, sited the events in a particular time and place, thus undermining their continued mythical status. And when confronted with an editor who must keep pace and plot in place, it was probably a potential aspect of the book that had to give. After all, in the end there is always the Great Editor, the one true opinion that demands both first and last word. calls the tune, pays the piper and laughs last.

And so via an Old Testament myth presented as history, or even vice-versa, Jenny Diski creates a thoroughly modern drama of relationships, ambitions, resentment and fulfilment. Driven people do things they feel are demanded of them both by history and identity. And everything is underpinned by an eventual morality and justice, a restatement of human failing and vulnerability. He who tricks his way to wealth is himself tricked into marriage and then, at last, by his own sons, who themselves resent the favouritism bestowed on a brother. They offer the father the son's bloodstained coat of many colours and thus, in their own way, get their own way. Some things do not change, cannot be edited.


Dustwrapper Blurb, 13 Jan 2006
'After These Things' is an account of the relationship between Abraham's tragic son Isaac and Isaac's son Jacob. The book follows the psychological trail of the children of Abraham, the first properly constituted family, and finds that, like all families, their story is one of wishes and fears. In Isaac and Jacob's relationship we see all the complexities of love, power and desire that make them quintessentially human.

The inimitable Jenny Diski tells this ancient story anew, with the delicious subversive wit and intelligence readers have come to expect from this wonderfully surprising writer.

Compelling reading and wonderful character development, 04 Sep 2006
I found this to be a powerful book that delved deeply into the life of a woman named Rachel who becomes involved in a sadomasochistic relationship with an emotionally distant man. Initially I felt the title referred to this s&m relationship. However, as the author reveals more of Rachel's life, it appears that there is nothing natural in her emotionally starved world. Her parents fought bitterly when she was a child. She struggles with paralyzing spells of depression and is incapable of emotional closeness. She is delightfully articulate and quick witted - an intelligent woman with a large share of emotional distress. We watch her spiraling deeper into a suicidal state and it takes a strong reader to maintain compassion. Finally her darkest hour passes, and the novel ends with her first steps towards a healthier self concept. Compelling reading and wonderful character development - a great first novel.

A dismal portrait of destructive collusion, 23 Aug 2003
I came upon this book by chance as it was part of a promotional display at my local library. I then made the unforgivable mistake of being lured into a book by the appearance of its cover.

The novel centres around the collusive sado-masochistic relationship between Rachel the main character and Joshua, a faceless individual about whom very little is revealed. I have to say I found the book unremittingly depressing. I turned the pages in vain hoping to find a glimmer of light, some redeeming feature of Rachel's personality which would lift the novel from the dreary and mundane: but no - she appeared to be a truly damaged personality with little hope of repair. I found the thread of the novel quite disjointed at times; the tone changing from a light magazine-style to some heavy, self-indulgent passages with whole-page paragraphs. Also I could not see how the section dealing with her quite different kind of relationship to Pete fitted into the overall theme of the novel: it seemed like a section from another kind of book altogether had been pasted in - it just did not seem to link up in any way.

At no time in the novel did I really see Rachel as a victim: the relationship though bizarre and often causing her pain was clearly as much under her control as his: it was plainly collusive. As the novel progressed I was intrigued to find out how Rachel would manage to maintain such a tightly controlled relationship while mentally she was so unbalanced. She was clearly terrified of intimacy and commitment of any kind and always sought the safety and refuge of her own company.

I found the farcical resolution to the novel disappointing and taking away what little hope I had left for Rachel. All in all a pretty gloomy read.

More complex than kinky sex, 28 May 2003
I read this as an interested participant in submissive sexual practices and although it was easy to read I found it disappointing on several scores. Firstly, the hype which Rachel's relationship with Joshua caused in all previous reviews completely blanks out the significant relationship she develops with Pete who she is teaching. Further, while submission is truly addictive this is not that well documented or explored. Lastly I could see no reasons why anyone would submit to Joshua Ableman - he has no features at all as outlined in the book, and certainly none of the features I would expect to see in any dominant partner of mine. Thank goodness we are all different.

DON'T...miss reading this book :o), 19 Oct 2001
DON'T is a collection of reviews jenny diski wrote mostly for the London Review of Books...
people who already know her works DON'T have to be afraid to get disappointed here...still the same astonishing way of writing, surpising the readers and - best of all - her amazing humour!!! those who DON'T know jenny diski, yet, should really get to read this...especially her review of dolly parton's autobiography! *LMAO* ;o)

Much more than the story it sets out to interpret., 27 Mar 2008
In After These things Jenny Diski accomplishes an almost impossible task. She starts with a well known story, and thus a plot ready declared, a story that claims history and yet is read as myth. She reworks it, gives shape, form and thought to characters we think we might already know, and then puts words in their mouths. She finally presents the whole as an original work, a novel of deception, love and the intricacies of family life in a culture now perceived as alien. And she succeeds brilliantly, creating a new experience in a new world for the reader within a familiarity that her approach reinterprets.

After These Things is born of the Old Testament. Abraham and Isaac, then Jacob and Esau, Rachel and Leah and finally Joseph and his half brothers, all face one another in head-to-head rivalry. There is trickery and deception, bullying and exploitation, politics and self-interest. Individual battles are fought, private wars are waged, all in the name of family. For instance, Jacob profits through his trickery, but is later himself the victim of Leah's coup. And so within each rivalry there are characters with stratagems, strategies and aims, goals that are often justified via claims to occupying a special position in relation to God. And yet all the characters have to live with the consequences of their individual ruthlessness. Together they pursue individual goals that eventually add up to a dynastic success, but perhaps not for any of the reasons that they themselves planned.

And After These Things thus grows into a finely-drawn psychological thriller and political intrigue. Characters whose interests coincide cooperate, albeit often only pragmatically, despite their partners' clearly stated and obvious cultural and religious differences. A tangled web of deceit, compromise, antagonism and truce eventually casts Jacob as the successful instigator of a bloodline, despite its having been constructed via four separate mothers, two of them wives and two others their maids, and all of them in conflict. He experiences true love only with the wife he does not himself love, and then refuses to countenance repeating the emotion. But she provides him with the children he needs to secure his ambition. His true love, meanwhile, does not conceive and becomes so racked with self-doubt and destructive jealousy that she can express little feeling and certainly no love for her husband. Thus Jenny Diski achieves her own goal of creating drama out of a well-known story and thereby creates characters that are rounded, real people, their obvious humanity belying their myth.

What she does not do is attempt to generate a sense or feeling of place. Though we travel with the semi-nomadic action and live alongside shepherds and specialist livestock breeders, we are never allowed to taste the foods they eat, smell the homesteads they inhabit, or walk the hills, deserts or plains with them. Jenny Diski keeps us within their minds, their motives and their fears.

This is not a shortcoming of After These Things, merely an observation of a limit the author no doubt consciously placed on its scope. After These Things is already a novel with breadth of story and depth of analysis. To have made it also a descriptive, deliberately sensory portrayal of a time and place would have been a gargantuan and ultimately self-destructive task. It would have detracted from the books focus on human relationships and also, crucially, sited the events in a particular time and place, thus undermining their continued mythical status. And when confronted with an editor who must keep pace and plot in place, it was probably a potential aspect of the book that had to give. After all, in the end there is always the Great Editor, the one true opinion that demands both first and last word. calls the tune, pays the piper and laughs last.

And so via an Old Testament myth presented as history, or even vice-versa, Jenny Diski creates a thoroughly modern drama of relationships, ambitions, resentment and fulfilment. Driven people do things they feel are demanded of them both by history and identity. And everything is underpinned by an eventual morality and justice, a restatement of human failing and vulnerability. He who tricks his way to wealth is himself tricked into marriage and then, at last, by his own sons, who themselves resent the favouritism bestowed on a brother. They offer the father the son's bloodstained coat of many colours and thus, in their own way, get their own way. Some things do not change, cannot be edited.


Dustwrapper Blurb, 13 Jan 2006
'After These Things' is an account of the relationship between Abraham's tragic son Isaac and Isaac's son Jacob. The book follows the psychological trail of the children of Abraham, the first properly constituted family, and finds that, like all families, their story is one of wishes and fears. In Isaac and Jacob's relationship we see all the complexities of love, power and desire that make them quintessentially human.

The inimitable Jenny Diski tells this ancient story anew, with the delicious subversive wit and intelligence readers have come to expect from this wonderfully surprising writer.

Take one grandiose, petulant God, add (his?) Abram and Sarai from Genesis, put the iconoclastic Sarai centre-stage, and you have the makings of Jenny Diski's eighth novel, Only Human: A Comedy. Readers have come to count on Diski's work for its uncomfortable challenges and witty subversions. Here she tackles the biblical account of origins, but her version is filled with sly volte-faces and lovely twists: Who creates who? Who can claim ownership of the grand narrative? Why believe?

Sarai's story is one of innocence tempered by longings that harden into a refusal to suffer fools gladly--and that includes Abram for his obedient faith in his God, as well as this quixotic God himself. In alternating voices this aggrieved, easily dumbfounded God speaks to us in the first person, admitting to being astounded by the inventiveness of humans, and foxed by their desire to become us, when what he has shown them is his eternal I am. Abram's and Sarai's trials and tribulations are many and great: shame and exile, desert wanderings, and, most terrible of all, Sarai's barrenness, which she accepts as "the way of the world", but Abram is consumed by the loss of his begetting. God, meantime, stamps and stomps, and peppers his watchfulness with what he learns from his humans until "I had my fill of mankind and its seething, fleshy, unreliable ways" and so decides that he will become "ahead of the game". What he hadn't bargained for was love--and the consequent desolations of loss. Becoming all too human, he wants to be loved by Abram, and is consumed by jealousy and revenge towards Sarai. He plots against Sarai but her machinations are a match for his. She organises the birth of Ishmael by Hagar; he orchestrates the birth of Isaac, and incidentally renames them Abraham and Sarah and then he tops it with: "The story's mine, not hers, never was. The interruption is the narrative, the interrupter is the narrator". But one wonders how it is that Sarah knew the story all along, passed down through generations of women.

Audaciously inventive and humanely rich in its observation of emotional tumult, although just occasionally this slips over into "emotional literacy" speech rather than nuance, Jenny Diski has done her story proud. --Ruth Petrie