Everyman, Philip Roth
Everyman, Philip Roth
7 Rating(s)
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Everyman

Author: Philip Roth

Narrator: George Guidall

Unabridged: 4 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/01/2023


Synopsis

Philip Roth’s Everyman is a candidly intimate yet universal story of loss, regret, and stoicism. The bestselling author of The Plot Against America now turns his attention from “one family’s harrowing encounter with history” (New York Times) to one man’s lifelong skirmish with mortality.The fate of Roth’s everyman is traced from his first shocking confrontation with death on the idyllic beaches of his childhood summers, through the family trials and professional achievements of his vigorous adulthood, and into his old age, when he is rended by observing the deterioration of his contemporaries and stalked by his own physical woes.A successful commercial artist with a New York ad agency, he is the father of two sons from a first marriage who despise him and a daughter from a second marriage who adores him. He is the beloved brother of a good man whose physical well-being comes to arouse his bitter envy, and he is the lonely ex-husband of three very different women with whom he’s made a mess of marriage. In the end he is a man who has become what he does not want to be.The terrain of this powerful novel—Roth’s twenty-seventh book and the fifth to be published in the twenty-first century—is the human body. Its subject is the common experience that terrifies us all.Everyman takes its title from an anonymous fifteenth-century allegorical play, a classic of early English drama, whose theme is the summoning of the living to death.

About Philip Roth

Philip Roth (1933–2018) was one of the most decorated writers in American history, having won the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award twice, the PEN/Faulkner Award three times, the National Book Award, and many more. He also won the Ambassador Book Award of the English-Speaking Union and in the same year received the National Medal of Arts at the White House. In 2001 he received the highest award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Gold Medal in Fiction, given every six years “for the entire work of the recipient.”

About George Guidall

George Guidall has recorded over 1,700 audiobooks and is the recipient of many AudioFile Earphones Awards and two Audie Awards for Excellence in Audiobook Narration, as well as a Special Achievement Award in 2014 from the Audio Publishers Association. His forty-year acting career includes starring roles on Broadway, an Obie Award for best performance off Broadway, and frequent television appearances.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jim on April 27, 2024

In addition to my usual translations, I’ve decided to read at least one book by famous authors I have not previously read. So I’ll try Philip Roth. But wait! – eons ago I read Portnoy’s Complaint – didn’t everyone back then (1969)? Lol. The review contains mild SPOILERS. Everyman is a chronicle of the......more

Goodreads review by Dave on February 18, 2025

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on”—Robert Frost “The meaning of life is that it stops”—Franz Kafka Everyman is one of four short novels Philip Roth wrote in his later career, including Indignation, The Humbling and Nemesis. Everyman is the name that the narrat......more

Goodreads review by Valeriu on September 18, 2023

Cînd am deschis cu mai bine de 10 ani în urmă Everyman / Povestea lui Orișicine (într-o altă ediție), nu știam mai nimic despre Philip Roth (1933 - 2018). Mai aveam vreo 3 cărți de el prin casă, dar nu catadicsisem să le răsfoiesc. Nu știam nici că Everyman trimite la o piesă de teatru alegorică din......more

Goodreads review by Michael on October 08, 2019

Almost perfectly balanced, Everyman reads almost like a funeral dirge. The unnamed protagonist goes over various milestones in his personal life and reflects on the inevitability of death and the difficulties on love. It is a quick read but it leaves a deep impression. As always, Roth's prose is des......more

Goodreads review by Fabian on May 14, 2019

Call it "The Death of Ivan Ilych 2: Modern Times." It's true, Roth is considered to be a modern day Tolstoy. But is this type of tale (already told and retold)... necessary? It's all my fault. In my summer marathon of small novels (though inversely large in quality) I've been through devastation afte......more


Quotes

“A rich exploration of the epiphany that awaits us all—that ‘life’s most disturbing intensity is death.’” Kirkus Review (starred review)

“Through it all, there’s that Rothian voice: pained, angry, arrogant, and deeply, wryly funny. Nothing escapes him.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)