100 pages to go and this is living up to the expectations engendered by the praise of so many previous readers.

Cited by many as Roth's best work it's easy to see why that's the case - very large themes are tackled herein & quite a number of them too. For me that's the book's minor undoing. Whilst both its reach & its grasp are in step it can be argued that the many digressions, whilst adding a lot of background detail, mean the story is somewhat unresolved by the end of the 420+ pages. On the other hand it's hard to say if another 200 or so pages would have overplayed things & what the tale does amply show is that you can't really know what's around the corner (revelations are still made in the final chapters) + events in the lives of those involved after the period mainly covered are probably supposed to be assumed to be wholly without the unusual.

Posted as part of Read It, Swap It transaction.