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Liked It “This is my first time reading Philip Roth and I loved it. I enjoyed the incredible insights on old age and the boomerang effect of youthful mishaps.” see full review » see other reviews » |
Didn’t Like It “not so okay.” see full review » see other reviews » |
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“not so okay. ”
yeohgw wrote this review Sunday, August 16 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“This book goes with The Ghost Writer. What you do, is you read Ghost Writer first, then immediately after read Exit Ghost. Trust me: that's how ya do it. The good news is "Ghost Writer" is extremely short, there is a large-print copy for Exit Ghost. The bad news is: they are both not-so-good novels ! Actually, Ghost Writer is beyond terrible, but if you are dedicated to reading all of the 9 books in the Zuckerman Series.....then what choice is there ?”
Mar W wrote this review Wednesday, July 8 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Like the insipid rantings of an over-the-hill, out of steam writer. Plot spirals out of control, and I really had enough of the urine. ”
hack_anderson wrote this review Thursday, March 19 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“This is my first time reading Philip Roth and I loved it. I enjoyed the incredible insights on old age and the boomerang effect of youthful mishaps. ”
Jennifer N wrote this review Thursday, January 29 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“Ghost Writer's Exit
artie wrote this review Monday, January 19 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
There are three parts from the story. The three parts look separated from the outset, but it all comes together in the end intertwined with E. I. Lonoff's story. I was kind of bored in the beginning of the book, but it took me by surprise that all the threads were magically emerged together. The message from the author is amazingly strong and resonant with all different parts of the plot.
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“Read a little too much like a personal memoir with lots of name dropping. Also really depressing account of upper middle age but he writes beautiful sentences. There is a great section on the proliferation of cell phones on the NYC streets over the course of the 1990s which I could really relate to.”
luna51 wrote this review Saturday, January 10 2009. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“In August 1979, Philip Roth introduced Nathan Zuckerman to the literary scene with The Ghost Writer. Zuckerman and the public hit it off and a fictional American icon was born. Now in his ninth appearance, Exit Ghost, Roth gives readers one last peek, reportedly, into the life and times of this legendary figure.
juliefaillaearhart wrote this review Tuesday, December 2 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
When readers first met Zuckerman, the story was set in the 1950s. It is now late 2004. Zuckerman has lived the last eleven years on a mountaintop in Massachusetts void of any communication of note with the outside world. Yes, he is aware of the events of 9/11, but that awful day and its aftermath did not seem to touch the sanctity of his peaceful world. Zuckerman has come to New York to pursue a new prostrate/incontinence solution.
As he spends time in his hotel room and wandering the once familiar streets, Zuckerman happens to see an old friend of his, Amy Bellette, from The Ghost Writer. It’s apparent that Amy is deathly ill; the scar running across her half-sheaved head is a giveaway. This sight touches Zuckerman in a way he had not foreseen.
Reading a copy of the The New York Review as he sat in one of his favorite restaurants, Zuckerman sees an ad from a young couple to want to swap homes with someone in rural New England, “…ideally for a year.”
Zuckerman calls Jaime and Billy. The city has worked its magic on him and he wants to stay. After meeting the couple, Zuckerman finds himself in lust with Jaime; a feeling he hasn’t experienced since his prostrate was removed.
This is the first time that I have a Zuckerman novel. I have known about him in ways that many know Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn without ever reading Twain, I feel as if I have made a new friend and want to go back to read all previous novels. There was no feeling of missing backstory and nothing that got in the way of my enjoying Exit Ghost, a wonderful new work by one of America’s greatest writers.
Review originally appeared at www.armchairinterviews.com
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“This is the second book I've purchased from Audio Books. I have been listening to it to and from work every day. I found it compelling, but I don't know that I completely followed it. I tend to be distracted (fortunately!) by driving tasks and miss crucial moments, but with my Ipod Shuffle I can't rewind without starting over. I may purchase a hard copy and try again. I also think I should have read all of the Zuckerman novels prior to reading this one, but still don't regret having read it.”
Jan M wrote this review Wednesday, July 16 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“I think it was a bit slow and weighty this story because there is little dialogue throughout the novel and the character's development quite incomplete from my point of view. I was sort of disappointed, maybe I expected more from the astonishing writer of American Pastoral. I almost did not care about this old dodder writer and I could not follow easily his voice in the plot. Anyway, this novel is brilliant by a gifted author.
Elisabeth B wrote this review Tuesday, July 1 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
The melancholy tone haunts every page and the main character, Nathan Zuckerman feels frustrated and helpless because his esphincter dysfunction and impotence but he is seeking the ghost of a dead writer, E. I. Lonoff. The young desirable woman, Jamie Logan is turmented by fears and existential doubts since the 9/11 attack.
The political theme in the novel is Bush and the electoral night back in 2004. Reality and fiction are mixed and Roth's prose is vague. I ought to read former novels (The Ghost Writer and My Life as a Man) so that I will be able to understand the storyline of this male character, apparently Roth's alter ego.
What stroke me the most was Amy's letter and the scenery of New York and its inhabitants after the Bush reelection. Another engrossing theme is the writer's concern about what Kilman, the obnoxious scholar can find out in Lonoff's past, as Zuckerman describes:
"An astonishing thing it is, too, that one's prowess and achievement, such as they have been, should find their consummation in the retribution of biographical inquisition. The man in control of the words, the man making up stories all his life, winds up, after death, remembered, if at all, for a story made up about him, his covert brand of baseness discovered and described with uncompromising candor, clarity, self-certainty, with grave concern for the most delicate issues of morality, and with no small measure of delight."
I was bitten by the bug to read more Roth's novels and enjoy myself with his incisiveness prose.
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