Review - Everyman by Philip Roth

Everyman by Philip Roth
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin 2006
Hardback 182 pages




Increasingly I have noticed that time is slipping away from me. From the piles of books that I have scattered around my bedroom, waiting to be read, to the backlog of reviews that I need to finish, there never seems to be enough minutes in the day to finish all of the tasks that I have taken on. And as the piles of books to read continues to grow and consume my living spaces, I have to wonder: how will I ever live long enough to read everything that I want? And so it may be appropriate that as I was having these thoughts about my own mortality when I decided to read Philip Roth's Everyman.

This book is in the typical Roth style, dealing with the complexities of grief and regret, loss and facing ones own mortality with a sharp, unfailingly straightforward storyline. Like Roth's other books, the protagonist of this tale is a Jewish man from New Jersey, who, as he grows older, is confronted with his own mortality as his health steadily declines. The entire book is about this confrontation, from a small child and his first experience of dealing with death and sickness, to having to face his own mortality and confront the guilt and regrets of his life as he finds himself increasingly alone as friends and colleagues pass away and his three failed marriages leave him isolated.

While this isn't one of my favorite books by Roth, it is still an enjoyable read and is quite accessible to all types of readers. Roth's voice is at turns arrogant and angry, and always, sarcastically funny and wry. Like his other novels he doesn't write to a type (coming of age Jewish-American males) he writes to a condition: the human one.