- Published: 1 November 2010
- ISBN: 9780099535652
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 160
- RRP: $28.00
The Humbling
- Published: 1 November 2010
- ISBN: 9780099535652
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 160
- RRP: $28.00
Slim, fast-moving, sometimes funny but mostly bleak read...original and unsettling
The Times
Roth is no longer a novelist of comic exuberance, but of thoughtful meditation about life and increasingly death; he is our surviving laureate of lateness. His new work will not detain you long, but it will linger
Telegraph
His most savage and unrelenting work yet... (Roth) has lost neither his voice nor his power to shock
Sunday Herald
The novel, bleak, uncertain, and full of fear, finds traction in familiar Rothian interrogations - of the self's deviousness, the impossible murkiness of motive, and the performative nature of identity - and it is these which produce the book's cruellest apprehension: The failures were his, as was the bewildering biography on which he was impaled
New Yorker
Roth's late prodigious burst of creativity continues
Metro
Roth...knows no limits, which is part of the fun of reading him
New Stateman
Adds to his reputation as one of American literature's greats
The Times
While the other big beasts of his literary generation lost it one by one, Roth has enjoyed a flowering of late form barely seen since Yeats.
Literary Review
There is a clarity, almost a ruthlessness, to his work, which makes the experience of reading any of his books a bracing, wild ride... He is the last of the giants
The Times
This is another dark and wonderfully written meditation on life and love by one of American's greatest living writers
Bookseller
Told with the customary subtle, spare and beautiful prose that is Roth's mark
Tablet
At his best when things are at worst
Daily Express
The great man of American literature still flashes with brilliance
Sunday Express
Witty and provocative
Daily Mail
Roth scores a palpable hit
Economist
I read everything by Philip Roth... As he's got older he's writing these incredible, unflinching books about the ageing process
The Word
Wonderful touches
Sunday Times
The Humbling is a stark triptych of breakdown, rehabilitation and outcome that reprises recent themes of loss, ageing and sexual potency
Financial Times
The book's prose is pure Roth, perfect and precise... While Roth's Humbling may be occasionally implausible, his humbling (small "h") has been more real: since publication, critics have attacked this book, suggesting that Roth, like Axler, has "lost his magic". He hasn't. There are definitely some silly moments here but there are also some perfect ones. Roth's talent is, unlike Axler's, far from dead
The Times
A grimly funny commentary of the universal drama of ageing
The Times
A literary colossus, whose ability to inspire, astonish and enrage his readers is undiminished'
Washington Post