Denial, deception, retribution and justice served with brutal irony keep chief witness and Roth alter ego Nathan Zuckerman curious, busy and ultimately terrified in this finale to the informal trilogy begun with American Pastoral (1997) and continued through I Married a Communist (1998). As in the two previous books, Zuckerman's interest is again dominated by a self-made individual's spectacular rise and equally dramatic fall, US-style. Classicist Coleman Silk, former president of a New England college, is forced into retirement by the frenzy created by his use of a word deemed racially charged. He not only loses his job and his status, but his disgrace may have caused his wife's death,
too. Silk is angry; his new friend Zuckerman is intrigued. More is to follow as news of Silk's affair with an allegedly illiterate college janitor, the estranged wife of a crazed Vietnam veteran and mother of two children burnt to death, adds to the gossip. Even more shocking is Silk's determined re-invention. This is Roth at his least selfobsessed yet still informed and questioning of his country and society. Zuckerman plays sympathetic witness to Silk's odyssey while the conversational narrative is elevated by Roth's rage, urgency and exasperated humour.
Michael Collins and the Troubles by Ulick O'Connor (Mainstream Publishing,
