American Pastoral

American Pastoral/Philip Roth 423 pg.

This book tells of the undoing of Seymour "Swede" Levov. The Swede lives a wonderful life in which he is a star athlete, great looking and destined to take over the successful family business. He marries his dream girl (Miss New Jersey no less) and is not too surprised that life is wonderful because that is the way it has always been. He and his wife have a daughter who is also perfect in his eyes until she starts becoming politically active in a radical way and breaking with her family. The daughter ends up bombing the general store in her hometown killing an innocent bystander. At this point the Swede's life starts a downward spiral that he cannot comprehend, cannot break out of and cannot see an end to.

This book won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize and I'm sure the deeper meaning and representation of America in crisis during the Vietnam War years, Watergate, etc. are why this book is an award winner. However, I really enjoyed the more straight forward aspect of the family relationships. The Swede does a lot of reminiscing about happy little events from his earlier life. In these memories his daughter seems happy and devoted to her parents. As you read them, you wonder if he is remembering things as they really were or as he convinced himself they were. Fairly late in the book he has a conversation with his quite outspoken and caustic younger brother who pretty much says the daughter was always odd and he isn't surprised how things turned out for her. Does a parent's love blind them to the real problems? Of course it is a possibility. When your precious child ends up going bad, how do you salvage the rest of your life? - Christa