Did I say the characters in Letting Go were isolated? Check that - I just got to part II.

Well scump on me as we used to say in 7th grade, but there I go in yesterday's post writing about Philip Roth's first novel, "Letting Go," and noting how it's an especially lonely novel because through the first 70 pages or so it introduces only 5 characters, each of them lonely and alienated in his or her way - and then I get onto the 2nd section of the novel, Paul Loves Libby, and suddenly we get a whole slew of new characters and a complex web of family relationships - a much more traditional or conventional novel in that regard. I almost wonder whether each of the six sections of the novel is like a standalone novella, with characters linked across them - more novelistic than Roth's first book, Goodbye, Columbus, which consisted of six novellas or long stories linked by theme (Jews!) and setting (mostly Newark and environs) and tone (witty, ironic, self-reflective). Anyway, 2nd part of Letting Go takes two of the characters from Part 1, Paul and Libby Herz, and goes into the background on their marriage and how the interfaith marriage, mid-1950s, was received by Paul's family and in process we met his two very eccentric uncles and his dreary and controlling failure of a father (Roth's great theme - patrimony). Can't tell if this will be a "sprawling" novel as the dust jacket unhopefully put it or a complex novel with many interrelated strands - in either case, it's still for me very compelling and thoughtful and literary in a way we seldom see in fiction today - smart and thoughtful without being clever or contrived or gimmicky (talking tigers!, voices from the dead!) or trendy (zombie! vampires!).