THE GHOST WRITER -- Philip Roth

A Fawcett Crest Book -- pb
New York -- ©1979 -- 222pp
ISBN: 0-449-20009-4

A young writer, excited by the prospect but wary of making the wrong impression, is granted the opportunity to meet his "idol," a famous author, where the young man's imagination take over, creating wild, yet slightly plausible possibilities.

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I wasn't sure where this book was going to go when I started it, and now that I'm done, I'm quite certain that I don't know where it's been.

Who is the "ghost writer"? Is it the young man, Nathan Zuckerman, who's own work is still so new that it hasn't it's own body? Is it the old author, E.I. Lonoff, who isn't the embodiment of the writer that Zuckerman was expecting; who freely admits that all he does is "turn sentences around." Is it the girl, who Nathan imagines to be Anne Frank, living her life under an assumed name, and only Lonoff knows her true identity? Is it Hope, Lonoff's wife, who creates the only drama in Lonoff's life by leaving and accusing Lonoff of having an affair with the young girl? Is it all of them? Is it none of them?

This is the sort of book that one needs to read in school to be able to discuss in order to pick out what's going on. To be read, solo; digested only by the reader, leaves the book remarkably empty, and yet I feel there's so much more there to it.

Not recommended at this time, but to be shelved and read again.