American Pastoral: The renowned Pulitzer Prize-Winning novel

I got this book as it seemed everyone was reading it and I wanted to see what the fuss was all about...I never read anything from Roth, so I wasn't accustomed to his style of writing, and i must say it took me a while to get into it. There were a couple of times when I wanted to give up, as I found it to be too slow for my liking. The author goes into details so much on certain chapters, that it distracted me from the story. However, I persevered and stuck it out and in the end I was glad I did, as I did like it. Most times I fall in love with books straight away, this one took longer for me, but it was worth it.

Sorry i wanted, as the subject interested me, to get on with this : but was unable to so do.As outlined in the review submitted on Amazon of "The Human Stain" i struggle with the prose stile. Managing,with much effort to get to the end of "The Human Stain", tackling "American Pastoral",featuring the same laboured prose was not going to happen! John Updike,on the other hand, who,more or less,deals with the same territory i.e. contemporary America, with his easy going poetic style, the antithesis of Roth,s,is a joy to read. Maybe i am,as Roth is highly acclaimed, missing something. I do side,which attracted him to me in the first place, Roth,s sympathy for the underdog. my criticism is, specifically,about his writing style. Anyhow it,s undenyably a contrast in styles!: summed up,for me, as " laboured" for Roth. V. " a natural" for Updike.

I'm new to the writing of Philip Roth. I came to American Pastoral after reading Sabath's Theatre. What appeals to me is the way characters are explored and revealed via their thoughts and actions. They are given a reality which draws a reader into their world. We go on the journey as willing and interested parties wanting to know how the Levovs deal with the totally unforseen and radical path taken by their daughter Merry. The soft underbelly of the seemingly solid American family fortress is exposed. I should think anybody wishing to look beneath the surface of modern American society would be interested in American Pastoral.

A tragic family portrait, supposedly as seen through the eyes of an old jaundiced journalist. Consistently through the book no minute detail or boring fact is not worth a paragraph or more, unrelentingly verbose to the very last page.

masterpieces every now and then, divine writing, i had to skip chunks at a time as the detail ( eg. match scores) suffocated me. but i inhabit his world and will feel lost when i ve finished it. good company , Roth gives his all. i finished the book and now miss the characters who attached themselves to me. Especiallly the Swede

It’s hard work with no reward. The first 20 pages are totally incomprehensible, unless you happen to have an in-depth knowledge of obscure American baseball and football. The plot line is not remotely credible, neither are the two main characters, Merry and her father. The rest is just page after page of repetitive self-congratulatory prose and sentences up to ten lines long with no pause. There are numerous words and phrases that only hardcore American Jews are likely to understand. One cannot see why it is so praised by reviewers. Of the many thousands of books I have read in my long life this is the only one I would happily burn.

I draw the inevitable comparison with 'Rabbit, Run', which I liked better. 'American Pastoral' is a meandering tome that doesn't seem to resolve itself. Several of its stories are left to dangle unfinished. Its interesting premise, and where it works very well, is that the generation of Jews who ran away to America to build better, middle-class lives for themselves through dint of hard work and ambition, has spawned a generation uncomfortable with the bourgeois lives their parents and grandparents fought so hard to attain, and in the end they run from them. Thus with all-American hero, Seymour 'Swede' Levov, heir to his father's glove empire, married to a former beauty queen, whose stammering daughter rebels and commits a treacherous act against the person and the state. From there, hers is a downward spiral or mental breakdown, religious sect brainwashing, affairs and ill health, which embroils her immediate family. The whole is introduced by a novelist who attends a school reunion, forcing the reader to question the whole idea of 'the one most likely to....', and however this pans out, it might not be everything it seems on the surface.

I loved this book and found it difficult to put down. The development of both Merry and the Swede gave so much food for thought and I found the writing insightful and highly believable. A long read but thorough;y worth it!