A review by libellum_aphrodite
I Married a Communist by Philip Roth

Did not finish book.

"it was ok" enough for me to read 2/3 of it, but not good enough for me to remain interested enough to read the last 1/3. I was a bit torn about giving up when I had made it so far, but I had already read enough to be able to verbalize what I don't like about Philip Roth (this is the second book of his I've read) and didn't think I was going to pull much more than that. I didn't care about the characters and I feel like the narrator is just a channel for Roth's voice. It is the same narrator in all of his books with a different first name slapped on. I also was bothered by how he frames the story - on some level it is the narrator's high school teacher telling him a story, but when you get into it, it is really the story of the narrator's relationship with the Communist in the title and the teacher just gets in the way of the telling. I don't know what the pretense of the story being just about Ira is for. It is entirely Nathan centric, Ira is supposed to be the protagonist, or at least the central character around whom the events unfold, but the narrator evidently can't get far enough past himself to tell a story about someone else. I get the distinct feeling that Philip Roth is the one who can't get far enough past himself to tell a story about someone else and he picks a new alias for himself in each book. I don't know if the events in any of his books line up with his own experience or he's just imagining himself into most of it, but he's definitely too much of a presence while reading.