Goodbye, Columbus by Philip Roth

Goodbye, Columbus tells of a summer romance set in New Jersey between uptown girl Brenda Patimkin and librarian Neil Klugman. One glimpse of Brenda smoothing a wedgie from her bathing suit and Neil is lost.

Neil, also the narrator, lives at home with Aunt Gladys - one of the most entertaining characters in the book. She henpecks him, bemoans her kitchen duties, and scoffs at his romantic ambitions. Her voice is hilarious - and rings stridently from the page with every utterance. Dialogue, in Goodbye, Columbus, is Roth’s strength. And here I should note that, published in 1959, this was Philip Roth’s first novel - and it won him the US National Book Award for Fiction in 1960.

Roth’s sentence structure is straightforward, making for an uncomplicated, fast read. (By the end, I was hankering for a little Flaubert.) There are some interesting scenes with a black child in the library; sixty years later, the boy’s defensive reasoning still reflects attitudes today.

All in all, a novel of economic mobility, Jewish identity, family relations, and youth’s delight in destruction and willfully waspish words.