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Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories

Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories

List Price: $32.00
Your Price: $32.00
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Vintage
Review: The title story, Goodbye, Columbus is everything you expect from this great writer. The interaction and dialogue between the main character and his aunt is extremely funny. A must for Roth fans. The five short stores are all worthwhile reads. I've read "Defender of the Faith" before and enjoyed it very much. "Epstein" and "The Conversion of the Jews" are just as good.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Vintage
Review: The title story, Goodbye, Columbus is everything you expect from this great writer. The interaction and dialogue between the main character and his aunt is extremely funny. A must for Roth fans. The five short stores are all worthwhile reads. I've read "Defender of the Faith" before and enjoyed it very much. "Epstein" and "The Conversion of the Jews" are just as good.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A lame erotic story
Review: This book is all about sex!! Since the first moment they met they started with sexual things, so I didn't really see the point in this story. Nothing interesting happens throughout the book, Roth just narrates where and how they had sex. It didn't have any thrillong parts. Expect for the end, you knew what was going to happen. It even didn'y seem to me as a romantic book, I've read much more romantic books. If you're someone that likes surprising books, this isn't one. This is just a lame erotic story.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Good, just good
Review: This book is certainly good, it's a story of a poor guy that has an affair with this rich girl, and they have a great time together but at the end they break out. Their relation is very weird and they are not the typical ridiculous couple, maybe because they are old enough for that stuff. Neil lives with his Aunt Gladys and uncle Max in Newark, while Brenda lives in Short Hills, a rich neighborhood. He falls in love with Brenda, and they have a summer sex-party with sessions every day at Brenda's home. Finally they're discovered by Brenda's parents and then all is over for them. They were discovered because Brenda "forgot" her diaphragm in his room and her mother found it. However Neil finds out that Brenda just made things happen, so she could break out with him.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: It is an interesting book that everybody should read
Review: This is a love story and everybody could think on it with a happy ending but it has not. I think that the author tried to finish it in a very different way but I didn't like it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A Timeless Masterpiece
Review: This is perhaps one of the finest novels to come out of the post war era. Sadly, while the author is a good novelist, he has never written anything else to compare to it. I remember reading it in high school and being overwelmed with the depth of his characters and the strength of the plot. A definite must read.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: classy first book
Review: Though definitely not his best work, _Goodbye, Columbus_ is an impressive first effort from one of the best authors of the second half of this century. Throughout the book one can sense the style Roth was creating for himself, and though this book doesn't exhibit that breathless virtuosity of prose, that mastery of the English language, of his later books, it's still a nice read.

The novella _Goodbye, Columbus_ is a love story and a quiet meditation on a different type of "class struggle," and a better example of Roth's style -- not to mention a better story -- than his next two books, _Letting Go_ and _When She Was Good_. The first of the five stories, "The Conversion of the Jews," is a bit sick, but entertaining for that very reason. The middle three stories are a bit lackluster, but the book ends in high style, with "Eli, the Fanatic," a story that manages to be both a moving story about conflicting loyalties (the goyim or the Jews) and a hilarious portrait of a nervous breakdown.

I would not recommend this book to those just starting to read Philip Roth (try the Zuckerman Bound trilogy instead), but for anyone wondering where Roth's career started, it's an excellent book.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An promising debut
Review: Wow, what an enjoyable novella! I really love the simplicity of the story and the humor in it which would become Roth's trademark, along with his flawed protagonist. The five short stories are enjoyable as well and, together with the novella, form a very intriguing set of existential stories. I think Roth showed so much promise with this work that, despite the fact that he is one of America's premier writers today, I don't know if he's ever fulfilled that potential.


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