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Exit Ghost

By Philip Roth

(58)

| Hardcover | 9780618915477

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Book Description

The last ordeal of Nathan Zuckerman, the indomitable literary adventurer of Roth’s nine Zuckerman books, like Rip Van Winkle returning to his hometown to find that all has changed, Nathan Zuckerman comes back to New York, the city he left eleven years before. Alone on his New England mountain,Continue

The last ordeal of Nathan Zuckerman, the indomitable literary adventurer of Roth’s nine Zuckerman books, like Rip Van Winkle returning to his hometown to find that all has changed, Nathan Zuckerman comes back to New York, the city he left eleven years before. Alone on his New England mountain, Zuckerman has been nothing but a writer: no voices, no media, no terrorist threats, no women, no news, no tasks other than his work and the enduring of old age. Walking the streets like a revenant, he quickly makes three connections that explode his carefully protected solitude. One is with a young couple with whom, in a rash moment, he offers to swap homes. They will flee post-9/11 Manhattan for his country refuge, and he will return to city life. But from the time he meets them, Zuckerman also wants to swap his solitude for the erotic challenge of the young woman, Jamie, whose allure draws him back to all that he thought he had left behind: intimacy, the vibrant play of heart and body. The second connection is with a figure from Zuckerman’s youth, Amy Bellette, companion and muse to Zuckerman’s first literary hero, E. I. Lonoff. The once irresistible Amy is now an old woman depleted by illness, guarding the memory of that grandly austere American writer who showed Nathan the solitary path to a writing vocation. The third connection is with Lonoff’s would-be biographer, a young literary hound who will do and say nearly anything to get to Lonoff’s “great secret.” Suddenly involved, as he never wanted or intended to be involved again, with love, mourning, desire, and animosity, Zuckerman plays out an interior drama of vivid and poignant possibilities. Haunted by Roth’s earlier work The Ghost Writer, Exit Ghost is an amazing leap into yet another phase in this great writer’s insatiable commitment to fiction.

Critics

  • And so Zuckerman faces the final curtain ...

    Exit Ghost by Philip Roth (Jonathan Cape) £16.99, pp292 Philip Roth has been giving up the ghost for more than a decade now and finding a new lease of life in the process. The quartet of novels that began with Sabbath's Theater (1995) and ended with ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

  • Behold the swelling scene ...

    Exit Ghost by Philip Roth 304pp, Jonathan Cape, £16.99 After 30 years and nine books, how do you kill off an alter ego? Philip Roth has been playing games with false selves from the beginning of his career: Alex Portnoy, David Kepesh, Peter Tarnopol, ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

2 Reviews

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  • Ghost Writer's Exit

    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 mes ... (continue)

    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.

    Is this helpful?

    artie said on Jan 12, 2009 | Add your feedback

  • beautiful, about old age, loss, rationality ans impulsiveness, about the importance of literature

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    loukie said on Jan 12, 2008 | Add your feedback

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9780618915477 Hardcover $26.00 $20.80 bn.com
$26.00 $17.52 The Book Depository
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