Pavel's Reviews > When She Was Good

"There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead;
And when she was good,
She was very, very good
But when she was bad she was horrid".

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In this book there is a unique feature for Roth's prose - it has female protagonist. I actually can't remember another such book by Roth. His heroes are always perverted men, suffering from mismatch of the world they imagine for themselves and the real one.
Lucy, who plays main role in "When she was good" somehow reflects those Roth's men types. She demands everything to be right and truthfull (from herself and from the others) and at the same time no matter how much she plays role of a saint and everybody's mentor(she was some kind of a nun as pubertating teenager at Catholic monastery), she badly lacks tolerance. She lectures people around, she judges her drunk father who truly loves her and her mother, she tries to recreate her husband and make him the way she wants him to be, not the way he is. That's how her female despotism described and the story of the book is what she gets for that in the end, for all this attitude towards other people, generally how such a person can end up. Well... Those last 59 pages of the book is perhaps the most vivid plastically expressed pages by Roth. This tragical turn of events is what differs "When she was good" from tons of straight-forward life-describing more or less boring books. Although middle part of "When she was good" is not that great, it stalls in waiting for this turn I've mentioned and I won't spoil it for you.
What to say... Amazing book, which obviously influenced a lot of its successors ("Cold spring harbor" by Yates is the one that first comes to mind). I bought my copy in Perm, city near Ural mountains, where our biggest documentary international film festival is being held ("Flaertiana"). I was showing my film about Naum Korzhavin there. As I always do I tracked down local used book store and there I've found Soviet edition of "When she was good":



To sum up: Nobel guys, finally give Philip Roth your prize untill he's with us! You really should take a break for one year from honouring obscure poets and give your prize to Roth. Please do.