October 2013 Guest Editor Linwood Barclay on American Pastoral by Philip Roth...
Okay, not a crime novel. I came to Roth late. Everyone else was reading him back when he wrote the outrageous Portnoy's Complaint, but I only discovered him about ten years ago, with The Plot Against America. But American Pastoral is, for me, his masterwork, and maybe one of the best books I've ever read.
Roth packs more into a paragraph than other writers pack into an entire book. I'm glad you don't have to be this good to get published.
Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize.
Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, grows up in the booming post-war years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him. His teenage daughter has become capable of an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism, wrenching Swede out of the longed-for American pastoral and into the indigenous American beserk.
| Primary Genre | Modern and Contemporary Fiction |
| Recommendations: |
Swede Levov, a legendary athlete at his Newark high school, grows up in the booming post-war years to marry a former Miss New Jersey, inherit his father's glove factory, and move into a stone house in the idyllic hamlet of Old Rimrock. And then one day in 1968, Swede's beautiful American luck deserts him.
American Pastoral features in the following genres: Modern and Contemporary Fiction, eBooks of the Month, General Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Paperback. £8.99, down from the £9.99 cover price. In Stock.
American Pastoral was written by Philip Roth and published by Vintage
American Pastoral has 423 pages
£8.99, reduced from £9.99. In Stock.
