 First edition | |
| Author | Philip Roth |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Random House |
Publication date | May 12, 1967 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 306 |
| OCLC | 31045007 |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3568.O855 W46 1995 |
| Preceded by | Letting Go |
| Followed by | Portnoy's Complaint |
When She Was Good is a 1967 novel by Philip Roth. [1] It is Roth's only novel with a female protagonist.
Set in a small town in the American Midwest during the 1940s, the novel portrays a moralistic young woman, Lucy Nelson.
When still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic father thrown in jail. Ever since then, she has been trying to reform the men around her, even if that ultimately means destroying herself in the process.
In the New York Times, critic and writer Wilfrid Sheed observed Roth remains a comic novelist: “His best scenes are still his lightest, the ones you aren't looking for.” Sheed continued, “At the same time, it should be emphasized that ‘When She Was Good,’ both in its sustained theme and its detail work, is a step in class above most recent novels: up on the ledge, in fact, where stringent standards set in. Roth is a serious writer, willing to turn his face against fashion and the expected. . . Roth is one of our few important writers concerning whose future it is possible to feel anything like real curiosity.” [2]
The Human Stain is a novel by Philip Roth, published May 5, 2000. The book is set in Western Massachusetts in the late 1990s. It is narrated by 65-year-old author Nathan Zuckerman, who appears in several earlier Roth novels, and who also figures in both American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998), two books that form a loose trilogy with The Human Stain. Zuckerman acts largely as an observer as the complex story of the protagonist, Coleman Silk, a retired professor of classics, is slowly revealed.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by the American author Harper Lee. It was published in 1960 and was instantly successful. In the United States, it is widely read in high schools and middle schools. To Kill a Mockingbird has become a classic of modern American literature, winning the Pulitzer Prize. The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was ten.
Philip Milton Roth was an American novelist and short story writer.
Portnoy's Complaint is a 1969 American novel by Philip Roth. Its success turned Roth into a major celebrity, sparking a storm of controversy over its explicit and candid treatment of sexuality, including detailed depictions of masturbation using various props including a piece of liver. The novel tells the humorous monologue of "a lust-ridden, mother-addicted young Jewish bachelor," who confesses to his psychoanalyst in "intimate, shameful detail, and coarse, abusive language." Many of its characteristics went on to become Roth trademarks.
Bernard Malamud was an American novelist and short story writer. Along with Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, and Philip Roth, he was one of the best known American Jewish authors of the 20th century. His baseball novel, The Natural, was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford. His 1966 novel The Fixer, about antisemitism in the Russian Empire, won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
Jacqueline Susann was an American novelist and actress. Her iconic novel, Valley of the Dolls (1966), is one of the best-selling books in publishing history. With her two subsequent works, The Love Machine (1969) and Once Is Not Enough (1973), Susann became the first author to have three novels top The New York Times Best Seller List consecutively.
50 First Dates is a 2004 American romantic comedy drama film directed by Peter Segal and starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore with Rob Schneider, Sean Astin and Dan Aykroyd in supporting roles. It follows the story of Henry, a womanizing marine veterinarian who falls for an art teacher named Lucy. When he discovers she has amnesia, and forgets him when she falls asleep, he resolves to win her over again each new day.
American Pastoral is a Philip Roth novel published in 1997 concerning Seymour "Swede" Levov, a successful Jewish American businessman and former high school star athlete from Newark, New Jersey. Levov's happy and conventional upper middle class life is ruined by the domestic social and political turmoil of the 1960s during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, which in the novel is described as a manifestation of the "indigenous American berserk".
The Great American Novel is a canonical novel that generally embodies and examines the essence and character of America. The term was coined by John William De Forest in an 1868 essay and later shortened to GAN. De Forest noted that the Great American Novel had most likely not been written yet.
Anatole Paul Broyard was an American writer, literary critic, and editor who wrote for The New York Times. In addition to his many reviews and columns, he published short stories, essays, and two books during his lifetime. His autobiographical works, Intoxicated by My Illness (1992) and Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir (1993), were published after his death.
Henry Roth was an American novelist and short story writer who found success later in life after his 1934 novel Call It Sleep was reissued in paperback in 1964.
A Room with a View is a 1985 British romance film directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant. It is written by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who adapted E. M. Forster's 1908 novel A Room with a View. Set in England and Italy, it is about a young woman named Lucy Honeychurch in the final throes of the restrictive and repressed culture of Edwardian England, and her developing love for a free-spirited young man, George Emerson. Maggie Smith, Denholm Elliott, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judi Dench and Simon Callow feature in supporting roles. The film closely follows the novel by use of chapter titles to distinguish thematic segments.
Witness for the Prosecution is a play adapted by Agatha Christie from her 1925 short story "Traitor's Hands". The play opened in London on 28 October 1953 at the Winter Garden Theatre. It was produced by Sir Peter Saunders.
Elizabeth Strout is an American novelist and author. She is widely known for her works in literary fiction and her descriptive characterization. She was born and raised in Portland, Maine, and her experiences in her youth served as inspiration for her novels–the fictional "Shirley Falls, Maine" is the setting of four of her seven novels.
Misery is a 1990 American psychological thriller film directed by Rob Reiner, based on Stephen King's 1987 novel of the same name, starring James Caan, Kathy Bates, Lauren Bacall, Richard Farnsworth, and Frances Sternhagen. The plot centers around an obsessive fan who holds an author captive and forces him to rewrite the finale to his book series.
Divergent is the debut novel of American novelist Veronica Roth, published by HarperCollins Children's Books in 2011. The novel is the first of the Divergent trilogy, a series of young adult dystopian novels set in a Divergent Universe. The novel Divergent features a post-apocalyptic version of Chicago and follows Beatrice "Tris" Prior as she explores her identity within a society that defines its citizens by their social and personality-related affiliation with five factions, which removes the threat of anyone exercising independent will and re-threatening the population's safety. Underlying the action and dystopian focused main plot is a romantic subplot between Tris and one of her instructors in the Dauntless faction, nicknamed Four.
Veronica Anne Roth is an American novelist and short story writer, known for her bestselling Divergent trilogy.
Kiera Cass is an American writer of young adult fiction, best known for The Selection series.
Fleishman Is in Trouble is a 2019 novel by American writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner. The debut novel was published on 18 June 2019 by Penguin Random House. It tells the story of a Manhattan couple undergoing a bitter divorce. Brodesser-Akner also wrote the screenplay for a TV series based on the novel, which was released on Hulu in 2022.
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