When She Was Good: Philip Roth - Softcover

"Roth is a living master" (New York Review of Books)

"When She Was Good, both its sustained theme and its detail work, is a step above most recent novels... Roth is a serious writer, willing to turn his face against fashion and the expected, and to take improbable chances'" (New York Times)

"High, careful tragedy, nasty as life, and Roth emerges...as a Dreiser who can write!" (Stanley Elkin)

"Compassion mingles with horror in a superb portrayal of a young woman's obsession with moral rectitude" (Saturday Review)

When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her irresponsible, alcoholic father thrown in jail. Since then, Lucy has become a furious adolescent - raging against middle-class life and provincial American piety - intent on reforming the men around her: especially her incompetent mama's boy of a husband, Roy. As time rolls on, Lucy struggles to free herself of the terrible disappointment engendered by her father, and is forever yearning for the man he could never be. It is with scalpel-like precision that Roth depicts the rage, the hatred and the ferocity of feeling that soon takes hold of Lucy's life.