: American Pastoral
Author: Philip Roth
I listened to the unabridged audiobook version of this novel and I found it lacking. It’s the first audiobook I’ve heard that actually has technical problems (inconsistent sound quality and volume level) and the reading was poor. This made a remarkable book difficult to follow: from the beginning to the end I was confused and not sure who was who and what was going on. The actor’s voice was the same for all characters — I never could even figure out who the narrator was. I thought it was one person, but the viewpoint kept shifting, so I was forced to conclude that the book was narrated by different people at different times, but that was impossible to tell from the way it was read. Usually when there are technical issues like this it’s disappointing but doesn’t ruin the book; however, in this case, it did serious damage. I’m not quite sure I followed the story. The book itself is amazingly written and tells a character-based story of incredible depth. It’s basically an old man looking back on his life and his family. Initially when we see him he has it all: he’s the superstar high school athlete, he marries a beauty queen in college, takes over his father’s leather glove business and is extremely wealthy, but later, as we piece together the traumatic events in his life, we see that there is conflict and tragedy. His wife hates the stereotype of beauty queen. Their beautiful daughter suffers from stuttering when younger, and eventually she rebells against her parents and runs away from home and is wanted by the FBI for murder. The mom suffers a breakdown and ends up in the looney bin. The dad is haunted by his daughter’s bizarre behavior and his own guilt (which he isn’t even sure he has). It’s a fascinating look into a life. There’s conflicts over personalities, religion, politics, economics, race. Scores of topics are touched upon. Unfortunately, the audiobook was so confusing that perhaps I didn’t follow the novel properly enough to judge it right, but it felt like it peters out into nothing. It’s a long story and I was expecting some sort of pay-off, some dramatic event at the end that would explain or justify everything, and I was given nothing but a “that’s the end.” Disappointing. I still think it’s a remarkable book and I might actually try to read the print edition someday and give it a second chance and see if it was the reading that ruined it for me. I really liked most of what I heard; I just felt the story was confusing at times and the ending weak. Many scenes in the middle were powerful (though they might have been even better if I had a clearer understanding of what was going on). In the end, I recommend it with a “your mileage may vary.”
Topic: [/book] |
