Nemesis
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Review
`Nemesis is an artfully constructed suspenseful novel with a cunning twist...' --The New York Review of Books, J.M. Coetzee
'...Recalls the works of Mann and Camus. Outstanding' --The Sunday Times
'very fine, very unsettling' --The Times
'...a perfectly proportioned Greek tragedy played out against the background of the polio epidemic that swept Newark, New Jersey...' --Financial Times
'Cantor is one of Roth's best creations and the atmosphere of terror is masterfully fashioned...' --The Sunday Telegraph
'Roth's book has the elegance of a fable and the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama' --The New Yorker
'Back at his imperious best ... the eloquence of Roth's storytelling makes Nemesis one of his most haunting works.' --The Mail on Sunday
`There is much to like in this novel' --The Scotsman
`Something to get your teeth into' --Stylist
`The "tyranny of contingency" is his theme and he pursues it with the cool, bleak brutality of a Greek tragedian' --Metro
'...an angry kaddish, or furious act of mourning, as deft and subtle in its construction as it is wrenchingly violent emotionally...' --The Spectator
'Nemesis is brief, astoundingly assured and devastating' --Time Out
`This is Vintage Roth: the story of a good man worn down - and finally ruined - by circumstance. Everything about it is perfectly judged...the writing throughout is flawless and the ending, when it comes, is both clever and profoundly moving.' --Observer
`A superbly managed novel. It may not be long, but it's full, complete. Roth's ear has never been better, and there is an almost unbelievable mastery of technique in the way that the prose slips between narrative and speech. This is unputdownable, and although it is one of my jobs to show you how authors do this kind of thing, I can't here, except by invoking some kind of magical talent on Roth's part.' --Guardian
`exceptional' --Metro
'...Recalls the works of Mann and Camus. Outstanding' --The Sunday Times
'very fine, very unsettling' --The Times
'...a perfectly proportioned Greek tragedy played out against the background of the polio epidemic that swept Newark, New Jersey...' --Financial Times
'Cantor is one of Roth's best creations and the atmosphere of terror is masterfully fashioned...' --The Sunday Telegraph
'Roth's book has the elegance of a fable and the tragic inevitability of a Greek drama' --The New Yorker
'Back at his imperious best ... the eloquence of Roth's storytelling makes Nemesis one of his most haunting works.' --The Mail on Sunday
`There is much to like in this novel' --The Scotsman
`Something to get your teeth into' --Stylist
`The "tyranny of contingency" is his theme and he pursues it with the cool, bleak brutality of a Greek tragedian' --Metro
'...an angry kaddish, or furious act of mourning, as deft and subtle in its construction as it is wrenchingly violent emotionally...' --The Spectator
'Nemesis is brief, astoundingly assured and devastating' --Time Out
`This is Vintage Roth: the story of a good man worn down - and finally ruined - by circumstance. Everything about it is perfectly judged...the writing throughout is flawless and the ending, when it comes, is both clever and profoundly moving.' --Observer
`A superbly managed novel. It may not be long, but it's full, complete. Roth's ear has never been better, and there is an almost unbelievable mastery of technique in the way that the prose slips between narrative and speech. This is unputdownable, and although it is one of my jobs to show you how authors do this kind of thing, I can't here, except by invoking some kind of magical talent on Roth's part.' --Guardian
`exceptional' --Metro
Book Description
An absolutely brilliant new novel by one of the world's great writers
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
40 of 42 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Many journalists have written off Roth's recent material. Those readers who follow such cues may already have missed the understated wit of 'Indignation'- hopefully they will be prepared to give 'Nemesis' a chance. They should. It's an absolute blinder.
In 'Nemesis', Roth transposes many of the ideas common to his work since 1995's 'Sabbath's Theatre'- creating a compendium of Rothian themes that functions as an outstanding novel in its own right. Playing with the death-fears behind his more recent works, Roth returns to the intersections of history and personal narrative that made his 90s 'American' trilogy so memorable. The results are dazzling.
We're back in the familiar territory of Weequahic, the Jewish suburb of Newark, New Jersey, introduced to a character whose simple belief in human progress and humanist perfection is tested by the strains of a polio epidemic. Bucky Cantor is a fascinating character, superficially bland yet all the more distinctive for it- Roth repeating his fascination with those rudely jolted awake from the American Dream (tm). The text's narrator, Arnold Mesnikoff, only reveals himself in the novel's concluding section- yet his life-narrative is set against Bucky's in a beautifully restrained fashion. The novel's final scene, without giving spoilers, is one of the most elegant and moving passages to be found in all Roth's fiction.
There's a lot in here- World War II, the loss of faith, the innocence of youth- but the prose style is clear, making even the most ambitious of topics merge seamlessly into the novel's structure. A step back from the vitriolic tragedy of 'The Humbling' and towards a more gently elegiac mode (first hinted at in 'Indignation'), 'Nemesis' is wholly unpretentious, deeply intelligent and unabashedly moving. It's Roth's best novel for a decade, and a great starting point for those late to his charms.
In 'Nemesis', Roth transposes many of the ideas common to his work since 1995's 'Sabbath's Theatre'- creating a compendium of Rothian themes that functions as an outstanding novel in its own right. Playing with the death-fears behind his more recent works, Roth returns to the intersections of history and personal narrative that made his 90s 'American' trilogy so memorable. The results are dazzling.
We're back in the familiar territory of Weequahic, the Jewish suburb of Newark, New Jersey, introduced to a character whose simple belief in human progress and humanist perfection is tested by the strains of a polio epidemic. Bucky Cantor is a fascinating character, superficially bland yet all the more distinctive for it- Roth repeating his fascination with those rudely jolted awake from the American Dream (tm). The text's narrator, Arnold Mesnikoff, only reveals himself in the novel's concluding section- yet his life-narrative is set against Bucky's in a beautifully restrained fashion. The novel's final scene, without giving spoilers, is one of the most elegant and moving passages to be found in all Roth's fiction.
There's a lot in here- World War II, the loss of faith, the innocence of youth- but the prose style is clear, making even the most ambitious of topics merge seamlessly into the novel's structure. A step back from the vitriolic tragedy of 'The Humbling' and towards a more gently elegiac mode (first hinted at in 'Indignation'), 'Nemesis' is wholly unpretentious, deeply intelligent and unabashedly moving. It's Roth's best novel for a decade, and a great starting point for those late to his charms.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Again Philip Roth is concerned with illness. The 1944 polio outbreak in his native Newark NJ - and again specifically in the Jewish community - is the subject of this book. A recent novel of his, Everyman, (see my review) was about the afflictions of old age; this one is about an illness most of whose victims are children.
There is panic in the community: vaccines against polio came into use only in 1955; and it appears that in 1944 noone knew exactly what caused it or how it was transmitted - but it was known that it is at its most virulent in the hot season, and there are vivid descriptions in this novel of the sweltering heat that summer. There was also the (correct) suspicion was that dirt was involved.
The central figure in this novel is Bucky Cantor, the popular young sports teacher at the local school, a sturdy, upright, supportive and caring figure, who is deeply affected as pupil after pupil is stricken by the disease. There are many ways in which people react to such a crisis: not only panic, but rage against God's injustice, or looking for scapegoats. Even he is accused by one parent of letting the children become too hot during their games.
His girl friend, who works at a children's summer camp on the cooler and more salubrious coast, urges him to take a job which has just fallen vacant there because the man who had it before had been called up. He agrees, but feels a deserter: he already felt ashamed that his poor eye-sight had prevented him from being accepted by the army, in which his two closest friends were fighting. When he gets to the camp, its setting and its happy children, beautifully described, could not be more different from the fetid city and its anxious youngsters he had left behind. He veers between joy and guilt. And then hammer blow after hammer blow will fall upon him. Guilt and then a feeling of duty - both self-imposed and both objectively unnecessary, as one of his interlocutors will point out to him - make for a bleak ending.
In my review of "Everyman", I wrote that the only fault I could find in the book was with its title; and I feel the same with this book. Nemesis is the spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris. And it seems harsh to me to describe the high standards of duty that Bucky set himself as hubris.
There is panic in the community: vaccines against polio came into use only in 1955; and it appears that in 1944 noone knew exactly what caused it or how it was transmitted - but it was known that it is at its most virulent in the hot season, and there are vivid descriptions in this novel of the sweltering heat that summer. There was also the (correct) suspicion was that dirt was involved.
The central figure in this novel is Bucky Cantor, the popular young sports teacher at the local school, a sturdy, upright, supportive and caring figure, who is deeply affected as pupil after pupil is stricken by the disease. There are many ways in which people react to such a crisis: not only panic, but rage against God's injustice, or looking for scapegoats. Even he is accused by one parent of letting the children become too hot during their games.
His girl friend, who works at a children's summer camp on the cooler and more salubrious coast, urges him to take a job which has just fallen vacant there because the man who had it before had been called up. He agrees, but feels a deserter: he already felt ashamed that his poor eye-sight had prevented him from being accepted by the army, in which his two closest friends were fighting. When he gets to the camp, its setting and its happy children, beautifully described, could not be more different from the fetid city and its anxious youngsters he had left behind. He veers between joy and guilt. And then hammer blow after hammer blow will fall upon him. Guilt and then a feeling of duty - both self-imposed and both objectively unnecessary, as one of his interlocutors will point out to him - make for a bleak ending.
In my review of "Everyman", I wrote that the only fault I could find in the book was with its title; and I feel the same with this book. Nemesis is the spirit of divine retribution against those who succumb to hubris. And it seems harsh to me to describe the high standards of duty that Bucky set himself as hubris.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Wonderfully written short novel that draws you in to the time (1944) and the people so rapidly and so effortlessly. And of course, being Roth, it is about so much more than 1944 and polio epidemics. Read the review by JM Coetzee in the New York Review of Books if you want to explore the deeper meanings of it all - although it does reveal the plot.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Roth in novella belter!
A compelling and moving story set against the back drop of the polio outbreak. Roth returns to the height of his powers with this tale of love and innocence lost.
Published 1 month ago by Mark James Gatto
nemesis
This was a really good book and I learnt so much about how polio was such a killer before the vaccination became available. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Caro Chadders
A wonderful book
I thought that Nemesis was a really wonderful book and that Roth was at his very best. It is a very powerful and moving story about a fundamentally decent man who assumes... Read more
Published 2 months ago by J. Baldwin
thought provoking heart wrenching
First Philip Roth I have read in decades, From the first lines you were drawn into the suffocating heat of the city and the suffering caused by the polio epidemic, causing... Read more
Published 3 months ago by diglo
An Elegiac Masterpiece
Philip Roth's 2010 'short' (although at 280 large typeface pages, it is still quite 'meaty') novel Nemesis is a beautifully constructed and elegiac account of one man's stubborn... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Keith M
Nemesis - highly recommended
Nemesis recounts the tale of Bucky Cantor, a playground supervisor in the Jewish Weequahic quarter of Newark during the 1944 polio epidemic. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Vicky.S
Be Patient and you will be Rewarded
Philip Roth divides his short novel Nemesis effectively into three parts. Each part is entitled and in reading the first two parts I got the sense of a simple straight forward... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Herman Norford
A stirring, yet uncomplicated novella
This is the first Philip Roth book I have read, having seen the BBC2's 'Review Show' cover this in typical highbrow fashion. Read more
Published 6 months ago by SportsBioFan
Engrossing, sad and beautiful
Another classic to add to Roth's marvellous, continuing contribution to modern literature. Superb, measured pace; detail; and sense of time and place. Read more
Published 6 months ago by William
Philip Roth on top form with this New Novel.
Roth has had his ups and downs in the past, but this latest of his is back to his best. A shortish novel about 1942 Jewish quarter of New York State. Read more
Published 6 months ago by J. DERHAM
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