This is Roth’s first full length novel; it never reaches the heights of control and subtlety that his later novels do, those from the Zuckerman novels onwards, yet here is Roth at his most interesting too, dealing with a protagonist as beautifully flawed as Zuckerman. The novel is big, and tackles a few too many main characters, so there may be a question as to whether it works as a whole. But it is full of the great writing that will make Roth a great novelist in the years following.
A Useful Fiction 