EVERYMAN (Philip Roth) - March 27/07

A superb - yet thoroughly depressing - novel revolving around the various health problems suffered by the protagonist. The book opens with his funeral and then follows him over the years - with an emphasis on his failed relationships and his surgeries. Roth proves to be an exceptional writer, although - admittedly - I didn't figure out until after the funeral that the main character was the one in the ground. Still, Roth paints an extraordinarily vivid portrait of a man and his regrets... This has to be the most bleak and flat-out honest look at aging I've ever come across. ***1/2 out of ****

THE END OF THE AFFAIR (Graham Greene) - March 22/07

Though kind of clunkily written, The End of the Affair eventually reveals itself to be a fairly engrossing story. Greene is clearly an atheist, and he spends much of the novel working out his feelings for god through both the central characters. As such, there are a lot of instances of the characters talking directly to god and questioning his existence. It's fairly interesting, but it's the doomed romance that really keeps things interesting (ie the guy becomes increasingly angry with the girl, until he finds out just why she stopped seeing him - quite poignant). *** out of ****

JOE COLLEGE (Tom Perrotta) - March 9/07

This early effort from Perrotta is cute enough but nowhere near as engaging as Little Children or Election. His overuse of flashbacks eventually becomes maddening, and there's just no overlooking the feeling that the whole thing would have worked better as a short story. Perrotta does manage to create a hero worth rooting for, however, and the vividness with which he describes Yale, the Roach Coach, and Danny's various friends is certainly impressive. But yeah, not Perrotta's best. *** out of ****