“the most beautiful word in the English language: ‘In-dig-na-tion!’ ”

"Who could have imagined that one would have forever to remember each moment of life down to its tiniest component? . . . There is no letup — for the afterlife is without sleep as well. . . . There are no doors. There are no days. . . . And the judgment is endless, though not because some deity judges you, but because your actions are naggingly being judged for all time by yourself.”

The unnamed protagonist of “Everyman” at least gets a joyous flash of himself as a boy at the ocean before the lights go out; “Indignation” makes even that terminally grim book seem sentimental. “Everyman” and “Exit Ghost” both have a mood of sorrowful resignation; this book goes about its grieving savagely. And of all Roth’s recent novels, it ventures farthest into the unknowable. In his unshowy way, with all his quotidian specificity and merciless skepticism, Roth is attempting to storm heaven — an endeavor all the more desperately daring because he seems dead certain it’s not there.

'Indignation' - cel mai recent P. Roth - recenzie în The New York Times.