I didn't much like this when it first came out in 1990 and neither time nor maturity has altered that opinion. Roth is often criticised for too often presenting autobiography as fiction, and this slight book encapsulates him at his most irritating, but without any traces of saving humour. The egotistical narrator and his mistress engage in the smart, if wary, banter favoured by a pair of lovers who seem more taken by the fact they have other lives they can retreat into than by by their relationship. At the heart - or, rather, centre of this book (it's too cold and self-regarding to have a heart) is the writer's ego and his ongoing love-affair with his clever narrative, which he seems to be living in order to write it. Or does he? While novels such as American Pastoral, I Married A Communist, The Counterlife and Portnoy's Complaint confirm that Roth at his best is very good indeed, this archly sophisticated, self-conscious performance is about as close to literary masturbation as even Roth has ever perpetrated.
