Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Roth's blistering first full-length novel, a tragi-comic tale examining the moral concerns, social expectations, and cultural constraints of Americans in the 1950s, "amusing, touching, and shocking by turns." (New York Times)
Gabe Wallach, freshly discharged from the Korean War army, reeling from his mother's recent death, and thus freed from old attachments, is hungrily seeking new ones. He's drawn to Paul Herz, a fellow graduate in literature, and to Libby - Paul's moody, Catholic-turned-Jewish wife. Gabe wonders: how to reconcile the ordered 'world of feeling' found in books with the anarchy of life, responsible adulthood, and his own love affairs? When Gabe meets Martha Reganhart, a spirited, outspoken, divorced mother of two, she poses the greatest challenge that he, and his moral enthusiasm, will face.