Patrimony: A True Story

Read this book and have à real intellectual pleasure !i have nothing to say more than this : read italien !

I like Philip Roth as an author. This book is really a tribute to his father not so much his mother. It seems that he was closer to his father, Herman Roth who he calls the true Bard of Newark, New Jersey. While his son, Philip Roth, has continued to become one of America's top authors and was almost short of winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005, Roth is hardly known or as popular as he should be. This book tells the story of how he copes and deals with his father's illness and death. I wished he would explain more about his relationship with his mother because I think it's key to explaining the troubles in his relationships with women. Twice divorced Roth lives alone in rural Connecticut. At the time of this book, he was with British actress Claire Bloom. Sadly, the relationship dissolved. Roth's own relationships with his brother and nephews are never really expanded or explained. Roth is quite a literary figure maybe a giant but he has problems which most literary geniuses have in their own personal life. Roth's loving book is a tribute to his father, Herman Roth, who was his greatest inspiration. The photo of him and his two sons on the cover was taken at Bradley Beach where Newark Jewish residents rented cottages or bungalows down by Bradley Beach in New Jersey during the hot summer months. I like Roth and have studied and read his books. He can make you feel pride about being from New Jersey in his works.

One of my favorite books of 2017 was Daniel Mendelsohn's wonderful book, An Odyssey, about his aged father auditing Mendelsohn's class on Homer's Odyssey. Roth's work about his father's decline and death lacks the allegorical aspects of Mendelsohn's, but it's a wonderful book nonetheless. As other reviewers have noted, Roth does not claim that his father -- or that he himself -- is perfect; it's a warts and all approach -- but there is so much filial love and respect for the father that makes the work very fulfilling.As I read the book, I thought about my own experience when one of our daughters developed what was, in effect, a similarly benign but very aggressive brain tumor, and the process of getting uncertain diagnoses and conflicting medical recommendations. It's grueling and painful, and there were times that I thought my wife and I would not survive, even if our daughter did. Well, she and we both did, which is not how Roth's story ends -- and there's a further wrinkle provided by Roth's own recent death -- but the story resonated with me for that and many other reasons.I don't know if I'd call it a masterpiece, but it was certainly a very, very good book.

I read "Patrimony" for my book club. I'd never read a Philip Roth book before, and personal memoirs typically aren't my favorite genre, but this is an exceptionally well-written book.What sets a great writer apart is the ability to convey emotions and personality by telling stories and capturing details. Roth does that masterfully, in subtle but powerful ways. The story of his father sitting in a doctor's office clutching at a piece of paper on which he'd prepared a list of questions for his doctor was particularly powerful. It conveyed his father's emotion and feeling of powerlessness without telegraphing, in a way that humanized his father beautifully.He also avoided deifying his father. Like all of us, he was a complicated man, and Roth's portrayal paints him as wonderfully human. When I finished the book, I can't say what my takeaway was, aside from that it was a terrific book, and I'd recommend it to anyone.

Great story. Written only as Roth could.

I had just read my first Phiip Roth book a month ago or so. Loved "Nemesis." Had to read this one, too. As an adult of aging parents I went through this over 20 years ago. I found it to be very introspective, descriptive in detail, and helped me work through a few lingering thoughts about my own journey. I'd like to read more about Philip Roth himself but found this book enthralling. If you're depressed and going through the aging and ill parents scenario, maybe wait awhile. I'm not at all sorry I read it.

As always, Roth's prose is stunning. But the story itself is lackluster. This is despite a handful of interesting vignettes that evoke either: (1)empathy (for Roth's father's plight, along with Roth's pain in witnessing his father's decline) or (2) laughter (presumably to relieve the reader's own dismay at the situation).Perhaps some readers found the connection between father and son (that Patrimony depicts) to be touching---and it is. Yet, for me, personally, it wasn't a subject compelling enough to occupy an entire book (albeit a short one of 240 pages).Make no mistake: I am an unabashed fan of Mr. Roth, having read all but two of his novels. So don't assume I'm running Patrimony down because I don't appreciate his genius. It's just that this one ranks in the lower quarter of Roth's works.My advice: read the American Trilogy (The Human Stain, I Married a Communist, American Pastoral) if you want Roth at his best.

This non-fiction work by Philip Roth traces the end-of-life relationship between Roth and his father. Roth comes across not as a renown novelist but as a man, a son, taking caring of his dying father. It is humbling to witness someone as talented as Roth engaged in the mundane task of caring for a loved parent whose time is up. I found many of the events unsettling, a deep drop into a chasm of no return.

After hearing of his passing and not knowing who he was I thought I would buy this £2.80 on here). I caught a pro reviewer on R4 suggesting this as a first read for the uninitiated. I polished it off in 2 days, the all 200 pages with large font. I found it instantly drew me in. Ironically it is about his father's demise to the grave and their relationship. Also sadly what his dad suffered from explains to me what has blighted our good freind. And we don't know whether our freind knows her condition and it's cause. The same dilemmas confronted Roth and his dad. It's written with a sense of ease and draws the reader in. For me the thoughts of my parents and their demise and our relationship s came flooding in. Use of language is excellent. A very insightful moving book.

Herman Roth was a remarkable man as well as being fortunate to have had, in his son Philip, a biographer in the family. In these memoirs Roth Junior gets the chance to demonstrate that the success of his books does not depend on his fecund imagination alone: he is simply a wonderful writer.Never can his literary craftsmanship have been put to better use than in the chronicle of his father's life and in particular his last years.There is no better example of how well this father and son function together than in their reaction to Walter Herrmann, an acquaintance of the father whose tales of his holocaust survival take even the worldly Roths by surprise. But such set-piece delights are found throughout.Towards the end, and despite the bleakness of it all (death basically), Roth never allows emotion to dominate the narrative: instead, he stays true to the story throughout and so spares none of the technical aspects of his father's dwindling health making for some blackly comic scenes at times.This is unquestionably a masterpiece.

An engrossing testimonial of a son's love and awe for his dying father - chronicling the memories of a vibrant and somewhat overbearing father throughout this renowned author's life. An unmistakable kind of confessional by Philip Roth while helping his dying father and supporting him through the last months of his life. However, I did not find it spell-binding.

We all have one thing in common- our demise- I think this unifies us all and thinking about it makes us more acceptable of other human beings no matter how much they can irritate us.If you are into this kind of thing I would also recommend Mortality by Christopher Hitchens- He also doesn't pull any punches either..

THIS IS THE FIRST BOOK,BY PHILIP ROTH,THAT I HAVE READ.. WHY I DIDN'T GET TO KNOW HIS WRITING LONG AGO IS BEYOND ME BUT,HAVING FOUND HIM,I AM DETERMINED TO READ EVERY BOOK HE HAS WRITTEN.