[Mirabell]

I posted these quotes because words fail me when it comes to this incredible novel. It's obviously indebted to Joyce, but it's different in many ways. It's a religious novel, I have rarely read such clear and inspired passages on revelations and on a young mind's coming to terms with spirituality. It's a realist novel, brilliantly evoking the streets where Roth was raised. And it's a linguistically inventive and sparkling novel, changing between yiddish, standard (american) english and ny dialect back and forth, invoking the confusion of someone stranded in a foreign tongue with only his ears to guide him.