Patrimony, a true story, touches the emotions as strongly as anything Philip Roth has ever written. Roth watches as his eighty-six-year-old ...
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Jan 18, 2012
Andrea
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Patrimony is a memoir written by award winning novelist Philip Roth about his father; specifically about his death and the memories his illness invoked in his son.
I had mixed emotions about this book. On the positive side, this non-fiction work was thought provoking and read at least somewhat like a novel (I need to get over thinking that all non-fiction is like a text book). I could relate somewhat to the author's situation. My father had cancer when I was a teenager, and it was such More...
I had mixed emotions about this book. On the positive side, this non-fiction work was thought provoking and read at least somewhat like a novel (I need to get over thinking that all non-fiction is like a text book). I could relate somewhat to the author's situation. My father had cancer when I was a teenager, and it was such More...
Jul 24, 2011
Elliot
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In 1987, at 86, the cantankerous Hermann Roth “was utterly isolated within a body that had become a terrifying escape-proof enclosure, the holding pen in a slaughterhouse.” Philip Roth’s memoir of his father’s dying is a shock of morality and a meditation on what we owe to our loved ones. Artfully, Roth’s flashbacks to his father’s Newark and the pedestrian circles he recalled were “his Deuteronomy, the history of his Israel”. No surprise here, but Roth’s father will be familiar to any reader of
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Feb 20, 2010
Stephen
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Philip Roth's "Patrimony" is a tribute to his father and a homage to a world that has now largely passed: the world of the first or second generation urban Jew who strove mightily to become an American, sometimes in the face of real anti-semitism. It is also a moving portrayal of a relationship between a precocious, independent son and a overbearing father who believed to the end that there was a right way and a wrong way of doing almost everything and felt compelled to correct those,
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Dec 30, 2008
Laura
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I thought I couldn't have asked anything more for myself before he died - this, too, was right and as it should be. You clean up your father's shit because it has to be cleaned up... why this was right and as it should be couldn't have been plainer to me, now that the job was done. So that was the patrimony. And not because cleaning it up was symbolic of something else, but because it wasn't, because it was nothing less or more than the lived reality that it was.
There was my patrimon More...
There was my patrimon More...
Dec 05, 2010
JM
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If I wanted to read a Philip Roth book without the misogyny, creepy old-man sex talk, this is the one for me. However, unlike the creepy old-man sex talk novels, it's so honest and sad that it doesn't feel like Philip Roth. Or, rather, it feels like a mature Philip Roth (duh), dealing with a real milestone. And that's why, for the first time, I don't have to hold my breath reading it. For the first time, it's real. Or as real as you can get in a book about a dying father.
Easily the fas More...
Easily the fas More...
Jan 18, 2010
Maggie
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Roth works his magic in a particularly intimate and for a lover of his work- I am in spades- special way. Chronicling the last year of his 86 year old Jewish father's life after finding a non-cancerous brain tumor, he deftly, with out sentiment but with the greatest love and tenderness, tells us the timeless story of life and death, father and son, to be cared for and then to care for. His father is a fantastically interesting character, gruff and stubborn and fierce and loyal and impossible and
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Feb 17, 2010
Judy
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For years I have wanted to read something by Phillip Roth, who has won about every writing award for fiction, including the Pulitzer. When I saw this memoir of his father's death, I thought it might be a good place to start. Hmmm....
While definitely more "literary" than Buckley's similarly-themed memoir _Losing Mum and Pup_, this book did not have the same impact on me, even though Roth's and Buckley's fathers shared many personality traits. Roth spends more time detaili More...
While definitely more "literary" than Buckley's similarly-themed memoir _Losing Mum and Pup_, this book did not have the same impact on me, even though Roth's and Buckley's fathers shared many personality traits. Roth spends more time detaili More...
Sep 12, 2009
Kelly
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
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Jan 29, 2012
Nemesis
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“Il sogno mi diceva che, se non nei miei libri o nella mia vita, almeno nei miei sogni sarei vissuto in eterno come il suo figlio piccolo.
Non ho mai letto nulla di Roth.
Anzi, a essere sincera posso affermare di averne quasi ignorato l’esistenza fino a qualche giorno fa(conosco molto bene invece il suo omonimo Joseph ma non lui).
Dopo un’attenta lettura posso affermare con certezza che io e Roth non abbiamo nulla in comune, se non la stessa tragica esperienza che ci unisce, l More...
Non ho mai letto nulla di Roth.
Anzi, a essere sincera posso affermare di averne quasi ignorato l’esistenza fino a qualche giorno fa(conosco molto bene invece il suo omonimo Joseph ma non lui).
Dopo un’attenta lettura posso affermare con certezza che io e Roth non abbiamo nulla in comune, se non la stessa tragica esperienza che ci unisce, l More...
Dec 03, 2007
Lorenzo
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Better than Salinger for my English even if I hope I won't have to talk about retirement castles, facial paralysises and tumors pretty soon...
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Jun 08, 2009
Simon
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There is something sad, something utterly painful about book tributes to fathers. When reading Wiesel's "Night", Franzen's "My Father's Brain" or Roth's "Patrimony", one comes to grips with a difficult reality, of the unnatural heart ache and grief that accompany aging and what they do in the mean time to the father-son relationship.
"Patrimony" offers a glimpse of this aging, of the deterioration of the body. As one reads, one physically parta More...
"Patrimony" offers a glimpse of this aging, of the deterioration of the body. As one reads, one physically parta More...
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Sep 27, 2011
Newton
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Philip Roth's heart-breaking memoir of the death of his father, Herman. I bought this book about a year ago in a flight of fancy for Roth's work; it had won some awards (as most of his books have), and it came cheap. I decided to read it now because it was fairly short and would be an easy one to get through. I did not expect to be so thoroughly sucked in, nor so devastated by the inevitable conclusion. I repeatedly found myself thinking about my own parents, who are about the same age as Roth's
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Jun 07, 2011
Stewart
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Summary of the 90% of Philip Roth's work that is not about politics or baseball: (1) describing the weird, disgusting, or stressful things done by alter ego and relatives, (2) writing about the family/social complications faced by writers who write about (1), and (3) sentiment or guilt connected with being a Jewish non-believer and doing (1) and (2). This book: non-fiction version of (1), (2), and (3). The true story about how Philip Roth's dying father crapped his pants and begged his son not t
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Jan 27, 2012
Callie
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The only other one of his I had read was American Pastoral. I didn't LOVE that one, but I did enjoy this one. The back cover calls it 'slyly straightforward' which I thought was an apt description. Roth writes with clarity and fearlessness about facing the death of his father. Great tenderness here and real solicitude. A tribute. I have read a lot of memoirs dealing with watching loved ones go through illness (in fact too many) but this one stands head and shoulders above the rest. We are spared
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Jun 06, 2009
Nancy
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Philip Roth's father's face is paralyzed and after a trip to the doctor it is discovered he has a tumor near his brain stem. As time goes on, the tumor will grow in size further disabling him and eventually taking his life unless he decides to have it removed. Roth carefully takes his readers through that time period as he and his father struggle with the medical decisions of surgery, care and the eventualities of old age. Through it you learn of their lives together in younger years with differ
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Aug 10, 2011
Smita
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This was a surprisingly riveting read. The subject matter would be considered heavy since it deals with aging and mortality of a parent and the natural conflict of parent-child relationships, but somehow, it had just the right tone and I just kept turning those pages. I can't imagine writing such a bare-it-all account of my relationships with my own parents, but I think Roth succeeded both in making me understand why he needed to and making me want to keep reading. I loved this book.
Jun 03, 2010
I work very, very, very part-time for the owner of an Inn, and on one of her shelves in one of her apartments, I saw this book, pulled it down from the shelf and began to read it as I waited for the guests to arrive. Two and a half hours later, I couldn't put it down. It was precisely on what I had just gone through in being the hospice caregiver to my mother who passed on April 13. This is an exquisite account of Roth tending his father. I read it in two days.
Jan 14, 2010
Sarah
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After you get through the wince-worthy opening chapters--which chronicle, in unfiltered detail, Roth's father's symptoms and diagnoses by various doctors--things get interesting, funny, and moving. I've been reading a lot of memoirs lately, and Roth's stands apart for his powers of analysis. He's brave (or cocky) enough to offer not only unflinching description and emotion, but also scrutiny and judgment.
Feb 11, 2012
Alicia
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Reading this book is like staring into someone's apartment with a telescope. The person isn't interesting or attractive or sexy; but it's all there for you to see. I had a hard time putting it down, and felt almost dirty for not stopping. It's an extremely detailed account of the (slow) death of Roth's father, and it certainly makes you feel like you're right there.
Dec 31, 2009
David
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I have a hard time sustaining interest with straight memoir, but Roth brings a lot of energy to the narrative which keeps it going for at least two-thirds of the book. He loses it at the end by bringing in a few of the worse elements of the genre: nonessential anecdotes meant to build the reader's opinion of the narrator, as well as a building sense of melodrama.
Jan 17, 2011
Rike
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Whereas in his other books, Roth often seems to be writing about characters that 'incidentally' share many traits with him, this book is explicitly autobiographical, and therefore, I like it much better. Here Roth does what he can do best, which is describing his own feelings towards his father, death, Jewishness, life in America, and so forth, in a compelling and intense way.
Nov 24, 2009
Dena
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possible EA memoir by Roth about his father in old age has a brain tumor, remembering his life and stories of family members in NJ and his job as insurance salesman. Love of his wife, whose death weakened him. crabby, irritable, unsentimental portrait of a life and a father-son relationship
Dec 21, 2010
Chazz
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I read this somewhat coincidentally just a week or so before my own father's death. This autobiographical work chronicles the last days of Roth's father's life, and the difficulties undergone by Roth. A quite good book. Or, at least, it meant a lot to me at the time.
Aug 21, 2010
This was an emotional story, that comes off as incredibly bold in its honesty. It was fascinating to see the connections to where some of the ideas for his fiction came from.
Jan 13, 2012
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/10383221
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/10383221
Nov 24, 2010
Robin
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So moving. As a long time reader of Roth (and a major fan) it was interesting to read his foray into memoir, seeing how autobiographical much of his work is.
Dec 05, 2008
Aaron
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An oddball in the Roth bibliography, it would be the lead line item if Roth ever tried to audition as songwriter for The Drive-By Truckers.
Nov 18, 2010
Gloriagloom
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Questo è il Libro definitivo sulla morte(ovviamente per chi ha piacere a leggere libri definitivi sulla morte).
Nov 13, 2010
Brenda
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A story all should read who have aging parents. and it doesn't hurt that Roth is a writer is an extraordinary writer.
Jul 31, 2009
Chris
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Our teacher made us read this so that we could understand how a celebrated author could write a book that ultimately failed.
