Nathan Zuckerman, the alter ego of Roth, returned to New York after eleven years of isolation in Berkeshire, Massachusetts. Unaware with new terrain, he has to adjust with the changing mores and politics, with old personages, and with haunting memories.
While this might be the last Zuckerman novel, it is no different to others with respect to the writing quality. In fact, some passages are so rich, so intimate, so painful.
'I stopped myself from saying "was everything that followed crushed by these few years?" because the answer was obvious by now. Everything, every last thing.'
'For most people, to say I've stayed in my childhood my whole life would mean I've stayed innocent and it's all been pretty. For you to say I stayed in my childhood my whole life means I stayed in this terrible story- life remained a terrible story. It means that I had so much pain in my youth that, one way or another, I stayed in it forever.'