SOURCE: "The End of Innocence," in Washington Post Book World, Vol. 27, No. 23, June 8, 1997, pp. 1. 14.

[In the following review Rifkind asserts that Roth is at his best in American Pastoral. She praises the epic qualities of the book, the depth of characterizations, and the social commentary and critique that make the novel "… possibly the finest work of his career."]

What better place to contemplate the mysteries of identity than a 45th high school reunion? That's where Nathan Zuckerman, humbled by impotence and incontinence after prostate cancer surgery, finds himself at the beginning of Philip Roth's 22nd book, American Pastoral. This is a more subdued Zuckerman than in previous novels, shadowed and tugged at by death, as was the hero of Sabbath's Theater (1995) and the narrator Roth in Patrimony, his 1992 memoir of his father's final illness.

Yet most of Zuckerman's old energy remains. Milling among his former classmates, Weequahic High...