THE BREAST (Philip Roth) - July 23/08

Well written but eye-rollingly pretentious, Philip Roth's The Breast follows David Kapesh as he's mysteriously transformed into a giant breast. The absurdness of the premise proves to be the least of the book's problems, as the entire thing seems to consist solely of long, drawn-out monologues in which Kapesh whines about his situation, his marriage, his work, etc, etc. Who cares? And the dude turns into a breast, for crying out loud. How pretentious do you have to be to think that's a workable idea? *1/2 out of ****