About the Book:

It is 1998, the year in which America is whipped into a frenzy of prurience by the impeachment of a president, and in a small New England town, an aging classics professor, Coleman Silk, is forced to retire when his colleagues decree that he is a racist. The charge is a lie, but the real truth about Silk would astonish his most virulent accuser.

Coleman Silk has a secret, one which has been kept for fifty years from his wife, his four children, his colleagues, and his friends, including the writer Nathan Zuckerman. It is Zuckerman who stumbles upon Silk’s secret and sets out to reconstruct the unknown biography of this eminent, upright man, esteemed as an educator for nearly all his life, and to understand how this ingeniously contrived life came unraveled. And to understand also how Silk’s astonishing private history is, in the words of The Wall Street Journal, “magnificently” interwoven with “the larger public history of modern America.”

Book Review:  ★★★★★★

This is one wild ride of a book.  I first picked it up because the premise sounded so implausible.  And I found myself hooked, almost from the beginning.  Not only is the story one of unusual setting, and construction — but the characters are so real, they are almost painful to read about.

Not only that, but there are so many issues addressed in this book, that it is hard to know where to begin.  Racism, sexual addiction, personal self destruction, controversy, and personal escapism — just to name the basics.  There are also many sub-plots that it is impossible to get everything out of this book in one read.

What I found particularly interesting is Mr. Roth’s ability to force the reader into seeing the world from an alternate point of view.  This is a topic that is hard to explain without an example.  The main character in this book, Coleman Silk, ultimately finds himself the victim of a specious allegation of racial prejudice against two of his students.  Because his character is so well developed you, as the reader really come to identify with the total injustice of the whole situation, and how it launches Coleman into a self-destructive cycle, at the age of 71.  But it isn’t until it is revealed that Colemen is a black man, that has spent his whole adult life hiding his black heritage, and background, that the reader comes to understand the magnitude of the injustice inflicted upon Coleman.  It is only when the allegations are made that the reader is forced into the juxtaposition of the white perspective, and the black perspective — and how those perspectives differ.

At first I had my doubts about a writer being able to successfully achieve this complex of a plot structure, and still keep from loosing the reader along the journey.  However, Mr. Roth has successfully achieved this goal — and even surpassed it.  This is one book that is filled with these types of ironies — and it forces the reader to think about what they are reading.

While this is not what I would consider an easy read — as there is so much to process, and take in.  I do consider this an excellent representation of a very talented author that has the ability to move beyond his own perspective and helps his readers see the world for other points of view.

Tags: America, Civil Rights, Love, Morality, Racism

Category: Fiction, Historical Fiction