Making fitful progress in Roth's The Plot Against America. Why so? After all, amongst Roth's many virtues one would assume his ability to engage the reader in turn-paging fashion would guarantee a novel with such a striking title to be supremely readable. And one would be quite right. I don't doubt I could easily finish the novel in a couple of days - were it not for the disconcerting sense of dread engendered by his all too plausible vision of a fascist America.
I've got as far as the Roth family's painful trip to Washington in the first months of the brilliantly imagined Lindbergh presidency and much as I want to read on to find out what happens next, a large part of me doesn't want to know what happens next because it isn't going to be very pleasant. I'm reminded of old friend Tony's oddly naïve declaration that he didn't see the point in reading novels with unhappy endings. In this case I think I know how he felt.
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