“The Ghost Writer” by Philip Roth – Life and Books

Nathan Zuckerman is a young and budding writer whose life can be summed up using one word: literature. He spends his time burying his nose into any book he can get his hands on, hoping to find some kind of meaning to his life in the literature he reads. 

The era he is living in is right after the Second World War, in the 1950s. During his travels he comes to stay at a lonely New England farmhouse, one that belongs to his idol, E. I. Lonoff. While staying there, Zuckerman comes to make the acquaintance of a young woman by the name of Amy Bellette, whose strange mannerisms and mysterious background intrigue Zuckerman. As becomes apparent, she was once a student of Lonoff, perhaps even his mistress... and what’s more, Zuckerman suspects she was the victim of Nazi persecution, something that can end up changing his entire life.

The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth is a nice beginning to a trilogy, and unlike many other trilogies out there, this one focuses more on characters rather than the events or the story. It’s a story about how Zuckerman comes to learn about what life is, seeing that his idol is far from being the man he depicted him as, inspecting his collection of writings by Henry James, trying to reconnect with his estranged father, and simply wondering in general about the process of creating art, how things are created and then edited and revised. Zuckerman is simply someone who has been living the life he believes to be right, and now he’s starting to understand that the world is far from being how he thought he saw it.

All in all, I have to say that most things about this book are quite brilliant. The characters are diverse and touching, even the more annoying ones in their own way. What’s more, Zuckerman’s journey of self-discovery is actually quite believable, and there are a bunch of truths and whatnot that he learns which we could apply to our everyday existence. 

As was said before, much of the novel is dedicated to painting the bridge between literature, creation and life, and the least I could say is that Philip Roth’s perspective on things is one worth considering, regardless of how right you think your beliefs may be. This book had a sort of humbling effect on me, and I recommend it to all who seek something more than just entertainment out of their readings.

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Philip Roth  (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) Philip Roth is an American novelist who first got noticed in 1959 with his novella Goodbye, Columbus, something which earned him the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. His many works have earned him PEN/Faulkner, National Book and National Book Critics Circle awards, without forgetting his 1997 Pulitzer Prize winner, American Pastoral.