Synopsis
Presents an intimate, incisive portrait of a married, middle-aged American living in London and his mistress, a married Englishwoman, through a private, adulterous dialogue
Reviews
Written entirely in unascribed dialogue (which provides the challenge of identifying the speakers), this newest novel by the NBCC Award-winning author is a clever comedy of manners that segues--as is the author's wont--into a disquisition on the distinction between literature and life. Most of the conversations are articulate, erotic pillow talk between adulterous lovers: an American writer living in London and his English mistress. She complains about the complications of her domestic life. He mainly listens: "I'm an ecouteur--an audiophiliac. I'm a talk fetishist." The identification with Roth himself is clear; the male speaker refers to "Zuckerman, my character." He also records conversations with other women, his former lovers. Two of them are emigrees from Eastern Europe; like the male speaker/Roth, they are outsiders in English society, where he is very conscious of British anti-Semitism. But the book is more complex than the conversational format suggests. Roth is up to his old tricks; the title has a dual meaning. In a conversation between the male character/Roth and his "wife," he insists that these dialogues are purely imaginary, notes for a novel in progress. Yes, but then another conversation suggests otherwise. Who is being deceived here? It's impossible to say. First serial to Esquire.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Philip, a successful, middle-aged, and highly opinionated Jewish-American novelist, moves to a small flat in London to work on his new book. He begins seeing a married Englishwoman in his spare time, and soon he has filled a notebook with their pre- and post-coital conversations. When he publishes this document as a novel, his indignant mistress accuses him of deceiving both her and his public. The book ends with Philip's impassioned defense of self-referential fiction. The issue, however, is not self-referential fiction in general but simply Roth's own peculiar version of it, which consists mostly of unabashed editorializing through the mouthpiece of Philip. A textbook example of the novel as soapbox, Deception will appeal only to Roth's most steadfast supporters. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/90. --Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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