The CBI Book Club will be meeting virtually on Wednesday, December 21 at 7:30pm (EST). For December, we will be reading American Pastoral by Philip Roth, a challenging but wonderful novel.

Winning the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, many readers regard it as Roth’s finest and most ambitious novel. It “tackles the subject or what happened to America in the decades between World War II and Vietnam, between the complacencies of the 50’s and the confusions of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. With the story of Seymour (Swede) Levov, Mr. Roth has chronicled the rise and fall of one man’s fortunes and in doing so created a resonant parable of American innocence and disillusion.” (Michiko Kakutani, NYT review 1997.)

Seymour Levov’s evolving and complex devotion to his beloved daughter Merry, whose increasingly radical political convictions lead her at age 16 to commit her first terrorist act, in large part drives the plot. The increasing tensions today between the ways older and younger generations view America give American Pastoral a resounding quality, according to Suzanne Levy Graver, our book club facilitator and Williams College Professor of English, Emerita.

For more information and to RSVP, please email Suzanne Levy Graver at [email protected].