The Act of Love
By Howard Jacobson
Jonathan Cape £17.99, 320 pages
FT Bookshop price: £14.39

For a species so brilliantly diverse in its sexual proclivities, the human race exhibits a strange desire to limit and constrain that which is considered “normal”. Certain practices are sanctioned while others – only slightly different – are labelled perverse. And although the past 50 years have broken down some of our taboos, others still hold strong. Fidelity is good, infidelity is bad. And the normal response to discovering that one’s partner has slept with someone else is jealousy and outrage – not pleasure.