“American Pastoral”

Roth is insightful as he chronicles the rise and fall of the American dream. Exploring from every side the beauty, promise, hope, violence, disaster, fracture, and persistence of all that America aspired to be in the 20th century. Through the life of one family, we see the fissures running along the foundations of the melting pot. 

I particularly appreciated how certain characters purporting to act for political reasons were really just reaching for a venue in which to react (and overreact) to the indignities of everyday life, while at the same time the ordinary lives of characters were shaped indelibly by political upheavals they wished they could ignore. It is a good reminder in this time of division and uncertainty, that while politics matter (indeed, they matter more than we often realize), much of the fear, anger, and vitriol that we encounter in the political sphere isn't really about politics.

I began to lose interest by about the fourth time the story looped back around to cover the same ground, and I was pretty much over it by the end. But I really enjoyed the first two-thirds!