Good short book - painful; definitely not a "happy family" book. Good subject matters, three good characters. ( )

The Indignation consistently expressed by the main character makes him pretty much insufferable. But hey, its Philip Roth, so the writing is great and the story itself, is quite interesting. ( )

I enjoyed this book. It was a little weird. ( )

Camus's L'Étranger, as imagined by Philip Roth. A deftly sketched Bildungsroman; an eloquent depiction of the indignation of the precocious sophomore who knows more than anyone around them; another masterclass in prose writing. Try as Marcus Messner (or M Meursault) might to lead a self-reliant, independent life, the pressures of assimilation and tradition impinge their attempts. ( )

Marcus Messner, son of a Jewish butcher in New Jersey in 1951, tells us at the start that he is dead. He relates how he got there at such a young age: He goes to college at a local community college and loves it. But he does not love his father's constant watchdogging of everything he does. He won't leave him alone. To escape his father's fear, Marcus heads for Winesburg College in Ohio.

The typical college experience in 1951, during the Korean Conflict, was not anything Marcus was prepared for. He is a serious atheist in a college that requires attendance at a Christian service regularly. He can't just "go along", as others advise him to do. He chooses instead to follow the advice of a popular Jewish upperclassman and pay someone to go to chapel for him. He bumps headlong into conflict with the headmaster, who sees Marcus's admiration for Bertrand Russell as little short of betrayal of everything that is America.

His insistence on following his principles ultimately leads to his death. A short, tragic, yet often comic, life, revealing the lack of acceptance of diversity in the 1950s, as well as the naivete that afflicted so many young people then and now. ( )