American Pastoral

A Masterpiece

I usually don't read fiction, but this is one of the best audio books I've ever experienced of any genre. You will quickly see why Roth is considered one of the greatest American writers of the last fifty years and the naration only adds to the experience. Some books hold my attention better on audio and some on the printed page. This is a masterpiece of both audio and the written word. It will hold your attention from beginning to end.

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49 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Powerful Masterpiece

Any additional comments?

What a book! Expertly narrated and beautifully written. A story that sticks with the reader long after the recording ends. Filled with raw human emotion that leaves the reader feeling they understand these characters and their lives inside out. A keeper that I can whole heartedly recommend if you want to be captivated and swept up in a story that is difficult to put down. One of the rare times that I carried my iPod around with me as I did my chores so I could keep listening. Just plain terrific storytelling!

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46 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

ON MY TOP TEN BEST READS LIST

This is one of THE best books I have ever encountered! These Roth characters are even more flawed, more human, than in his previous novels. The story is both broad, in the number of decades it covers, and deep, in its microscopic look at the impact of events on one man's life. Roth demonstrates with vigor and mastery the differences between generations, and the pain we each feel in our inability to grasp what people of a different age find important. The writing, as always, is lyrical and wandering, which considering the Jewish culture he writes about, is fitting, funny, and stinging. The narrator, Ron Silver, brings the Jewish angst to life well with his inflections.

I have already listened to passages over again, which after 14 plus hours says something about the strength of the descriptive passages, dialogue and ideas presented. And I will listen to this book again. It is a keeper. Although I never did anything quite as extreme as the daughter, Merry, this novel gave me a taste of what went through my parent's minds when I was in high school and college, pursuing passions of my own generation. An incredible read!

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39 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Relentless

This is the 10th or 12th audiobook to which I've listened on Audible.com, and far and above the rest of them (most of which are more "popular" or "populist" titles) this one is relentless. It's both impossible to listen to, and impossible to put down.

It's not a novel of plot, though there is one, and it's not a novel of characters, though there are many of them and they are very well drawn. Rather, it's a novel of images, and a novel of feelings, and a novel of writing. It's the most well written of the novels to which I've listened, especially since I find that I enjoy the languid descriptions and sections of prose that Roth uses. It's a story of what happens when an original sinner interacts with humans of all ilks, angels and demons alike. It's a story of nature (of the human kind) and nurture (of the human kind) and interactions (of the human kind) and above all, it's the story of people.

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34 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Not my cup of tea.

I listened to about 1/4 of this before completely losing interest. Maybe if I were a middle-aged man it would have been more interesting, but I found it completely and paralyzingly boring. I'm a voracious reader and listener -- novels, history, science, thrillers -- so for me to find something this unappealing is very unusual. The reader's voice also put me off; I've disliked other readers before but always gotten sufficiently used to them during early parts of an audiobook that by midway I didn't mind them any more. Not so with this guy.

The original book won a Pulitzer, so I will try again someday to listen to this one. Maybe then I'll discover what was so good about it.

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21 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

brilliant

I miss stories this well told, characters this well drawn, human-frailty this deeply felt.
But what elevated this book as an audio offering was the reading of Ron Silver. After having so many books ruined by utterly tone-deaf readings, it was a pleasure to finally encounter a reader that seemed to really understand what the book required. It is a hell of a performance. Other authors should be so lucky.

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20 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

Moving, heartbreaking

While I am not unsympathetic to cydscott's harsh but incisive observations (and indeed I urge you to read his/her review for balance), I experienced the book very differently. Contrary to the impression that the above mentioned review conveys, American Pastoral is not simply about the philosophical musings of an amateur psychoanalyst and unprogressive biographer. True it is that some of those musings can be a bit annoying, but they do serve a purpose in the story: we are presented with an unreliable narrator, one who stumbles rather badly in trying to make sense of the story of his subject, both adding to the sensation of mystery that a stranger's life can have upon us, and reminding us of the clumsiness with which we attempt to understand one another.

But perhaps the most memorable quality of American Pastoral for me as a reader is the intense tenderness with which Roth views some of his characters. (I do agree, however, with cydscott's complaint--if I understand it correctly--that women characters are portrayed in a more troubling way.) Whatever one may think of some of the narrator's fabrications, the story is in the end remarkably moving, and it chronicles the terrifying reverberations of a complicated moment in American History in the life of an ordinary American family.

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17 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

The Best Narration

Ron Silver is brilliant. His accents, phrasing, and timing give the story an added drama that must be exactly what Phillip Roth imagined. This is the best narration of any audiobook I have ever read.

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14 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

tedious and unprogressive

What turned me off first to this book was a scene in which the narrator--who is a writer fictionalizing the life of a man whom he idolized in high school--blames the anti-war bombings masterminded by his high school idol's daughter on her own Oedipal impulses as a child. What follows this is a 15-hour mind-numbingly boring meditation on what must have happened to make this child commit these acts. I'm not sure what the Oedipal fascination says about Philip Roth; at times, he seemed so absurdly out of touch with what goes on inside women's heads that I wondered by he attempts to write them at all. And I found his characterizations of women obnoxious and troubling, as I did his inability to work through not only a pained father's feelings about his daughter's political acts, but also what would make someone behave this way. I forced myself to finish this book because I wanted to find out whether the book ever took a critical turn, by offering a more nuanced vision of why someone might feel that war is so destructive that she must engage in her own destructive acts. I also couldn't stand the reader, and have no idea why he won an award for this reading, since he cannot do voices (which made it hard to follow conversations in many scenes). I had to stop listening to this book at night because his voice and reading got on my nerves so much that it made me irritated instead of sleepy. I realize that I might have had an idiosyncratic reaction to the way he reads. I get the sense that you might have to be a man to like this book, and it pains me to say that, since I am not a fan of essentialist arguments. I would highly discourage progessive readers from choosing this book, unless you have a penchant for psychoanalysis.

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14 personnes ont trouvé cela utile

One of the best -- do not miss

First, the reader is excellent. But he is reading a masterpiece. American Pastoral brilliant. Through the eyes of one family and the narrator, Roth captures the essence of the changes and turmoil that shook the country in the 60s and 70s. The narrative technique, the narrative itself, the dialogue, so many turns of phrase, really deliver a powerful emotional message. I don't know whether i would have enjoyed it as much without the wonderful narrator. Even though I had already listened to it, I chose it as a book for a long car trip and my husband loved it too. I liked it even more the second time. So much nuance.

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12 personnes ont trouvé cela utile