The main character, “Everyman”, is a 71-year-old divorced, successful advertising man who is confronting mortality without the crutch of religion or philosophy.
He is already dead and nearly buried when we meet him. His few surviving advertising colleagues are around his grave in a Jewish cemetery. Also present is his second wife, Phoebe, the one woman he ever loved, whom he left for a young Danish model. His brother, Howie, recalls his boyhood, when they both worked in their father’s jewellery store.
Years of surgery, emergency rooms and stents have dimmed the happier memories. As his life flashes before him, he is assaulted by the pain his divorces have caused and the thrill of the sex that prompted them. He abandoned his first wife and their resentful sons, cheated on his second wife, and envied the health of his brother. Only the forgiving child of his second marriage sticks by him.
This is a brutally honest novel about the heartbreakingly ordinary subject of failing health and impending death.
“Everyman” by Philip Roth - book for September 2008
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