Rating: 
Summary: Characters you care for
Review: Philip Roth has a rare quality: no matter how well his books are written, no matter the subject, he always manages to make you care for his characters, so that even the most mundane stories become heart-wrenching reads. The story of the Swede is no exception. It made me laugh and cringe, feel sad and elated, and it stunned me at how precisely the workings of the human soul can be rendered in words.
Rating: 
Summary: Great book goes horribly pear-shaped
Review: This book is a masterpiece for 300 solid pages, then suddenly it falls apart. Without warning, a deliriously brilliant character study, a story that should resonate powerfully in the hearts and minds of every American who reads it, becomes muddled in a contrivance-riddled dinner party that serves as the story's final act. When the novel ends, it feels as if Roth simply stopped writing, almost as if he knew his novel had gone horribly pear-shaped and to continue would have only exacerbated the problem.
Rating:
Summary: A fabulous book that asks questions about life.
Review: This book approachs a major question about relationships that happens to be framed in post-war suburban New Jersey. Having grown up in that area during that time improves my understanding and appreciation of the depth of understanding Roth illustrates. What is it that makes a child abhor the seemingly perfect life of her parents and their values? Why are the child's values, undoubtedly taught by the parents at some level, violently opposed to those of her teacher parents? Why couldn't Swede take a stand about anything? These are transcendent questions that give power and emotion to this work. If you want a standard crafted plot, watch TV; if you want to think, try this book.
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Summary: Please look into yourself!!!!
Review: I loved this book. It shaked me and it hurted me but it gave me real emotions. In a world only made of appearances (you are what you appear) and of superficial relationships this book showed what real life is. Yes, not everybody has a terrorist as a daughter, but please look into yourself... how many difficult , unconfessable moments have you encountered in your life? How many silences ? Roth gives voice to these silences and with a clear cut description of details shows us the "real" life in deep.
Rating: 
Summary: A novel with energy, but sub-mediocre in execution
Review: Sorry, but I just cannot understand all the hype and acclaim surrounding this book since its publication. The tragic decheance of Swede Levov (and why, after all, him?) simply does not hold up four hundred pages of rambling, digressive and poorly edited prose. Since just about every story on the planet has been told in one form or another, what makes a novel worth reading is the language and the execution of the work. Roth just did not pay enough attention to these two qualities. His writer's cornucopia is surely overbrimming with words and invention; but he does not channel this ebullience into flawless, well-crafted narrative. As a writer myself (and having written bad narrative, as well), I could spot all the poor instances of unedited verbal wash: passages and passages of dialogue and reminiscences that shot forth from the author's keyboard and were left to stand without any rework. This could be attributed to Roth's arrogance and jadedness: an established writer no longer bound to be at his very best, because the work will be published one way or another. The Pulitzer Prize? Probably for his life's work, but certainly not for this one.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest book I've read in years
Review: I had never read a book by Philip Roth and to judge by this one, he is a genius - it's beautifully written, with incredibly realistic (and lovable)human beings, and it's about the last century of America, only without the pseudoism of other contemporary, megalomaniac writers. And to say this is only an inch of all that this book deserves to be said about it...
Rating:
Summary: Totally absorbing; one of Roth's finest
Review: In my opinion Roth's best since Portnoy's complaint. I totally empathised with the main character and found the picture of the world moving on, leaving some of the characters a bit behind, touching and accurate. Roth's prose style is, as usual, immaculate. This book thoroughly deserved its Pulitzer prize.
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Summary: Since when do you win a Pulitzer for a first draft?
Review: This could have been a truly great novel. All the elements were there: dazzlingly human characters in Swede and Dawn, in Nathan and his classmates at the reunion; the tensions between generations of assimilating immigrants, and between the WWII generation and their children; and most of all, heartstopping insights into a marriage weathering the fallout of a nuclear explosion. Instead - well, I was left with the feeling that the author couldn't be bothered to actually craft the novel; he padded his premise with mind-numbing digressions, and wrapped it up with the specious conclusion that all is arbitrary. The character development is incredibly uneven: Swede, his father, Dawn, the Orcutts, they all live and breathe, but Merry, around whom the plot turns, makes no sense after the age of twelve. A winning child overnight gets fat and turns into Nancy Spungen. A mild case of schizophrenia or a sudden attack of bipolar disorder might have explained this; the stuttering? Forget it. If Roth had spent more time making this transformation believable and less time on the Miss America pageant... If Roth were less in love with his own voice, if he'd edited out the tangential ramblings, if he'd paid more attention to his characters and themes, I imagine the second or third draft would have been worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Not Worthy
Review: Roth must have been "owed" a Pulitzer--this one isn't worth the effort of reading. Fragmented, full of dead ends, illogical, and plodding.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece.
Review: American Pastoral is one of the best books written about America. It is meticulously structured, and Roth's prose is passionate and often brilliant. The characters are rendered with uncanny clarity, and the last 100 pages are just breathtaking. This is a rich, complex book that will reward, if not require re-reading.
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