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When She Was Good
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When She Was Good
by
Philip Roth
In this funny and chilling novel, the setting is a small town in the 1940s Midwest, and the subject is the heart of a wounded and ferociously moralistic young woman, one of those implacable American moralists whose "goodness" is a terrible disease.
When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic failure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then she has been try...more
When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic failure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then she has been try...more
Published
(first published 1967)
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"There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead;
And when she was good,
She was very, very good
But when she was bad she was horrid".
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In this book there is a unique feature for Roth's prose - it has female protagonist. I actually can't remember another such book by Roth. His heroes are always perverted men, suffering from mismatch of the world they imagine for themselves and the real one.
Lucy, who plays main role in "When she was good" som...more
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead;
And when she was good,
She was very, very good
But when she was bad she was horrid".
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
In this book there is a unique feature for Roth's prose - it has female protagonist. I actually can't remember another such book by Roth. His heroes are always perverted men, suffering from mismatch of the world they imagine for themselves and the real one.
Lucy, who plays main role in "When she was good" som...more
Man, I hate to give a Philip Roth book such a low score, but this time it would be unthinkable not to. Granted, this is early work and granted, after this he went on to write absolute masterpieces, but why did he even bother to write this inane drivel? Why did he write about such a hateful woman, a character he obviously despises, a woman with whom the reader cannot (ABSOLUTELY CANNOT!) sympathize at the end? Lucy seriously goes from being a normal, headstrong girl in small-town Illinois to a ra...more
As a huge Roth fan, this book was extremely polarizing. For much of the book, I thought the characterization of Lucy was extremely weak, but the denouement of the book seems to salvage some of this for me. Much like Nabokov's Despair, When She Was Good relies on the unreliable narrator to move it's plot along, and this is an effective tool as we sympathize with Lucy but slowly begin to realize how damaged she has become. I'm not sure I feel like the ending was necessary, or even inevitable. Have...more
This was nearly unbearable by the end, terribly uncomfortable and spiraling so deep into insanity. I thought Roth failed at establishing what the hell Lucy's "goodness" consisted of. By the end, I felt like one of the other characters in the book, wondering just what the hell was going on in her head. That being said, it's an interesting case study in the development of an obsession with morality that mid-western America is oft stereotyped to possess. Roth sheds some light on where he thinks it...more
As I'm sure is true of many of you one here who have read When She Was Good or are contemplating reading it, I have been reading a lot of Roth lately and wanted to get a taste of his pre-Portnoy novels (I was thinking about reading Letting Go, but its length turned me off, or at least caused me to wait for a later day). This is not a great Roth book, but I would still recommend it, especially to those of you who consider yourselves Roth completists. It's a good read, and you will not be bored by...more
Un Philip Roth inatteso quello che ho incontrato leggendo Quando lei era buona.
Infatti in questo libro da lui scritto nell’ormai lontano 1967 c’è tanto di diverso dalle altre mie letture dell’autore americano; si tratta del suo terzo libro e forse ai tempi non aveva ancora trovato il suo filone personale.
La cosa che più differenzia questa storia da tutte le altre è l’evidente mancanza assoluta di personaggi di origine ebraica in tutto il libro; di quella che diventerà una costante nei lavori fut...more
Infatti in questo libro da lui scritto nell’ormai lontano 1967 c’è tanto di diverso dalle altre mie letture dell’autore americano; si tratta del suo terzo libro e forse ai tempi non aveva ancora trovato il suo filone personale.
La cosa che più differenzia questa storia da tutte le altre è l’evidente mancanza assoluta di personaggi di origine ebraica in tutto il libro; di quella che diventerà una costante nei lavori fut...more
Yeesh! Did Roth's agent tell him to try his hand with midwestern goyim, and with a female protagonist? If so, it seems not to have been the best advice. Lucy Nelson is a prig, generous (well, blind) to her own faults, unforgiving of everyone else's. And true, the people in her life, from drunken father to icy grandmother to callow husband to vain sometime-friend, do not constitute the solidest of support systems. But golly, what a self-righteous whiner.
But at that, the novel doesn't turn unreada...more
But at that, the novel doesn't turn unreada...more
There’s an old metaphor about frogs and boiling water. The saying goes that if you toss a frog into boiling water, it’ll jump right back out, but if you put a frog into cold water and gradually heat it up, the frog will let itself be boiled alive because it doesn’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late. Well, I am that frog, and this book was the water.
In a post about a week ago I said that this book wasn’t particularly compelling and that I was just getting through it to make it to Portn...more
In a post about a week ago I said that this book wasn’t particularly compelling and that I was just getting through it to make it to Portn...more
When She Was Good is an earlier Philip Roth novel that tells the story of a young woman who attempts to escape the entrapments of a troubled small town upbringing. Lucy Nelson's twenty two years of life have been comprised of an alcoholic father, a weak and dependent mother, and her own unplanned pregnancy by a man she claims to despise. Her sanity is tested throughout the numerous trials and hardships that life has dealt her. Whether Lucy can move past these debilitating events and find a happi...more
1 like · like · see review
On the paperback of my edition there was a Stanley Elkin's comparison of Roth in "When Shae Was Good" with Dreiser - and it was perfectly correct. This book is another American Tragedy, similar to it in tense and the ability to stick the reader to itself and not to let go until the very climax. (No surprise in the fact that every American tragedy starts with unexpected pregnancy).
Clear, sensible, agreeable on every level, the viewpoint of the main character (Lucy Nelson) takes you to the long jo...more
Clear, sensible, agreeable on every level, the viewpoint of the main character (Lucy Nelson) takes you to the long jo...more
In all fairness, I shall note that under another name, this book might have gotten 3 stars from me, but coming late into the Roth game as I have, and then reading his work horribly out of order, to only now come to book #3 (3? is that all?), I found this one more of Roth searching for style rather than living it. There is something of Flaubert's Bovary mixed in with Dostoevsky's Idiot, and I am sad to say that my association isn't a high compliment, only because Roth has otherwise created charac...more
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My new infatuation with 1950s and '60s lit continues. This novel (the first Philip Roth I've read) is like 85 percent interior monologue, so it's good that Roth writes interior monologue well. In some ways, it's a traditional family saga about the legacy of dysfunction (although maybe that wasn't so traditional in 1967), but the structure is more wily. Roth's depiction of Lucy, a stubborn young woman determined not to relive her softhearted mother's marriage to an alcoholic, shows how being righ...more
Le storie scritte da Roth sono strazianti, e può sembrare che uno si faccia solo del male a leggere. Ma non è così. L'attesa della tragedia che — lo sai — arriverà permette in un certo senso di concentrarsi più sui personaggi che sugli avvenimenti. E nell'introspezione psicologica Roth è maestro: i personaggi non sono mai banalmente buoni o cattivo, sono figure dalle mille sfaccettature. Se è vero che emerge quasi sempre una figura (di solito protagonista) buona, nemmeno questa è esente dallo sc...more
A month after reading Philip Roth novels, I never remember his plots. I remember his characters, though, for a lifetime.
Lucy Bassart will be one that will stay with me for certain. In some ways, she could be labeled mentally ill. A control freak, she expected everyone around her to mold to her very strict (traditional yet non-traditional) moral standards. As the reader, even I sometimes felt frustrated with her steadfast refusal to suck it up and go with the flow. In other ways, though, Lucy cou...more
Lucy Bassart will be one that will stay with me for certain. In some ways, she could be labeled mentally ill. A control freak, she expected everyone around her to mold to her very strict (traditional yet non-traditional) moral standards. As the reader, even I sometimes felt frustrated with her steadfast refusal to suck it up and go with the flow. In other ways, though, Lucy cou...more
1 like · like · see review
It's sort of like Lolita in that the whole thing is really well-written from the point of view of (not one, but a slew) of people whose thinking is deeply unreliable. Of course the main point of view, which successfully overarches and subsumes the rest, is Lucy ("Jodie," if you read The Facts). This is not Roth's best mode, I think.
I guess the book was necessary to its author, perhaps even an act of cathartic vengeance, or at least a purgative gesture. Anyway, read it and read The Facts. Read th...more
I guess the book was necessary to its author, perhaps even an act of cathartic vengeance, or at least a purgative gesture. Anyway, read it and read The Facts. Read th...more
Reading this book felt like having a panic attack. But it was good.
While I enjoyed the banter in the first half of the book, the plot involving weak men, their weak wives, and a girl that can develop a strong interior story then flip it twice before acting... now that can get a bit long. The first part had quite a few funny lines. These dried up as you saw the main character's personality issues come to the front. The book played off of three men that can be best described as wishy washy. There's a lot of non-decision and inert dreaming that goes on, enough to...more
Not Roth’s worst novel, but a troubled work nonetheless. I have heard this book described as Roth’s “Bellow’s novel,” that it was his attempt to prove that he could write outside of his own sociological demographic, a talent that was just not in the cards for him. One of Roth’s great strengths as a writer is an ability to explode his narcissistic interiors into an entire world, be it through the downfall of American liberalism* or the relationship of artists to their work. In Roth’s best work (a...more
I read this book at the same time I read When She Was Good and Goodbye Columbus. They were all phenomenal. This made me want to start reading all of Roth's books in the order he wrote them, not just haphazardly as I had been.
You could hear the youth in his voice, you could sense the lack of cynicism (he's still cynical, but it's the cynicism of youth). But, that wasn't what made them great. They were great because they sucked you in, and you believed them.
You could hear the youth in his voice, you could sense the lack of cynicism (he's still cynical, but it's the cynicism of youth). But, that wasn't what made them great. They were great because they sucked you in, and you believed them.
I skimmed the last chapter/section because I was bored with Lucy and her hysterics and just wanted to know how it ended. Not that I see Lucy as the "bad guy" in this book--everyone is portrayed as weak and selfish in varying ways. At the beginning it was amusing to see through people's self-deceptions, but as the book wore on, it becamse obvious that Roth was only going to grant his characters that one note, and it got less and less engaging.
Wow. Best thing I've read in years. A beautifully drawn portrait of a seriously dysfunctional extended family in mid-twentieth century America. While some people have apparently read the book as misogynistic, I would say it's more a tragic story of a woman driven to the brink by the folly of men.
Yes, it's dark and unpleasant at times. So is life! An amazing job of writing from the point of view of a deeply flawed and unrealiable main character. i'm sure there are people who find the portrayal of Lucy misogynistic, but no one here gets off lightly and I am seduced by the sheer power of his writing.
I searched for more books to read that were like "Gone Girl," and this hit the mark. Great character development in Lucy. Although I initially felt sorry for her, the author successfully brings you around to hating her. Supposedly modeled after Roth's ex-wife.
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Liked it. Lucy was such a witch. Definitely of the moral stamp that she would either be burned at the stake or burning people at the stake. Like how you keep on trying to root for her and how skillfully and subtly Roth reveals her madness.
Part of it might have been the reader, I really wasn't a big fan of her, but I thought the book was fairly engaging right up until the part where we zoom in on Lucy's PoV. After the third scene of her fighting off Roy's advances, I gave up, it was just painful to listen to / get through.
A chilling book; not in the scary sense. Lucy's disintegration and her anger and despair with those around her especially the men in her life is truly chilling. This is a morality tale about the hidden truths within families
Yes, Roth is a master of the craft. But this book is full is shallow, often 2-dimensional characters whose dialog with each other verges on silly. There was not a single character I cared about.
This was better than its reputation would suggest but still read like a transitional Roth book. Roth captures, with shifting sympathies, the ups and (mostly) downs of a marriage that should never have happened but it feels a bit belabored by the end.
Another brilliant book by this great author. It tells the story of a midwestern woman whose strong sense of righteousness destroys everyone in her life.
It hit me personally and I was cringing during much of the reading because I was married to someone with many of the same characteristics; it left me wondering how Philip Roth could ever dream up such a person decades before my own situation!
One "unusual" note is that there are no Jewish protagonists in this story.
Once again, not an "easy" book b...more
It hit me personally and I was cringing during much of the reading because I was married to someone with many of the same characteristics; it left me wondering how Philip Roth could ever dream up such a person decades before my own situation!
One "unusual" note is that there are no Jewish protagonists in this story.
Once again, not an "easy" book b...more
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Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained early literary fame with the 1959 collection Goodbye, Columbus (winner of 1960's National Book Award), cemented it with his 1969 bestseller Portnoy's Complaint, and has continued to write critically-acclaimed works, many of which feature his fictional alter ego, Nathan Zuckerman. The Zuckerman novels began with The Ghost Writer in 1979, and inc...more
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Apr 17, 2011 02:17pm