As the American century draws to an uneasy close Philip Roth gives us a novel of unqualified greatness that is an elegy for all our centurys promises of prosperity civic order and domestic bliss. Roths protagonist is Swede Levov a legendary athlete at his Newark high school who grows up in the booming postwar years to marry a former Miss New Jersey inherit his fathers glove factory and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968 Swedes beautiful American luck deserts him.
For Swedes adored daughter Merry has grown from a loving quick-witted girl into a sullen fanatical teenager—a teenager capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism. And overnight Swede is wrenched out of the longer-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American berserk. Compulsively readable propelled by sorrow rage and a deep compassion for its characters this is Roths masterpiece.
