Nathan Zuckerman returns to narrate the story of his childhood idol, Seymour "The Swede" Levov. The Swede has lived a charmed life as a high school sports star who becomes a successful businessman and marries a beauty queen. His life takes a dark turn, however, when his troubled teen-aged daughter succumbs to the violence and hysteria of 1960s America. His earnest pursuit of the American dream does not prepare him for the betrayal that he ultimately experiences, and he dies without being able to understand or accept the undeserved cruelty of his fate.

Roth frames the story of the The Swede with Nathan Zuckerman's own attempts to understand the man he had once idolized. Zuckerman ultimately realizes that he has misread The Swede, that what pertains on the surface of the person does not well reflect the unknowable core of suffering and responsibility that motivates him from within.

This is a nuanced portrait of a magnetic personality and those who orbit around him without ever guessing at the tragedy behind the man. ( )

This is my third Roth, following Portnoy's Complaint and Sabbath's Theater. I was voluntarily Roth-less for about three years following each of my prior Roth reads, and it will likely be three more years before I pick him up again. It's not Roth's prose that accounts for my reluctance. He write good, especially when he's describing Newark in its bustling, industrial heyday. But I don't read novels to get depressed, and Roth's novels depress me. It's not the subject matter - my current fav Denis Johnson isn't all about rainbows and unicorns. But Roth's powerful descriptions of his characters' internal miseries effectively drag me down into the hopeless territory they are inhabiting. The lack of resolution of the most interesting plot line was also irritating. ( )

Got this out of the library, kind of hated to take it back. Roth is as good as ever, maybe better. So, it's ten years old now, and maybe the stuff about the daughter sounds a bit dated. But the voice is irresistible, and the details about the glove making business turn out to one of the best things in it. So, maybe I'll buy, if I can find room on the shelf. ( )

wow, amazing writing, story has really stuck with me ( )

I have read almost all of Roth's ouevre, and this is his great tragedy (Sabbath's Theater is his great comedy). Fueled by rage, grand in its reach, deeply historical, it is a masterwork. For a good article on its virtues (contrasted with the mediocre Indignation, Roth's most recent novel), see this article in the online Dublin Review of Books:
http://www.drb.ie/more_details/08-12-...
5 stars and unhesitatingly part of my core collection. ( )