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Nominate-best-2010

Magic tricks

By ED SIEGEL  |  November 11, 2009

Roth, too, would like you to think that Simon Axler is powerless over his lot in life, but that doesn’t wash. He’s a famous 65-year-old actor who can no longer go on stage without embarrassing himself. Neither, this being a Roth novel, can he help himself when his friends’ beautiful lesbian daughter, 25 years his junior, seduces him. Talk about pulling strings.

Every once in a while Roth lets loose with a line that has the sting and power of a Roger Federer forehand. But for the most part the prose is as predictable as the plot, leaving you to agree with both the writer and the protagonist: “This is the stuff not of high tragedy, but of the funny papers.”

So if you want the scoop on tragedy and happiness, the ordinary and extraordinary, at least this time around, go ask Alice.

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Related: 2009: The year in books, Tall tales, Lions and lambs, More more >
  Topics: Books , Media, Alice Munro, Alice Munro,  More more >
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ARTICLES BY ED SIEGEL
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  •   MAGIC TRICKS  |  November 11, 2009
    You have to give a seventysomething writer credit for daring to begin a book with “He’d lost his magic.”
  •   DEATH AND TRANSFIGURATION  |  March 03, 2009
    There are some playwrights whose work makes you think that a night at the theater is going to be an eat-your-vegetables affair, but then you see a sharp production of one of their plays and you realize the menu is meatier than you had remembered.
  •   BLACKBIRD AT SPEAKEASY  |  February 25, 2009
    The year 2007 was a banner one for British theater.
  •   ROOTED  |  April 22, 2008
    Jhumpa Lahiri won a Pulitzer Prize with her first collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies .
  •   GAME FACES  |  March 04, 2008
    There’s something awe-inspiring about watching an ensemble in which everyone is performing at the top of his or her game.

 See all articles by: ED SIEGEL

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