Light summer reading.

The plot of Everyman by Philip Roth is literally that - a plot.

The 2006 novel opens in a cemetery at which the main character is about to be buried. Relatives and friends are in attendance; a few grieving, some present from mere duty: and showing it. The rest of the short novel retraces his final years of regret, illness and vain attempts to retain health while regretting his life as a failed father and husband, a philanderer, and a jealous younger dying brother of his older, healthy sibling.

Then he dies.

It was a clear hot cloudless morning, close to midday. Blairgowrie beach was a blue and white colourcard flecked with primary-colour sun umbrellas. Heads in the water, too far out to recognise, disappeared and resurfaced. The shelf is gradual here; you can wade out three hundred metres without getting your head wet. A dark blue line beyond that point is deeper water. Away to the right, houses on Mt Martha twinkled white in the midday sun.

I opened the book. Is it autobiographical? Yes: a 2005 Roth interview prior the release of Everyman contained the following exchange:

... years ago I attended a memorial ceremony for an author," he says. "An incredible man full of life and humour, curiosity. He worked for a magazine here in New York. He had girlfriends, mistresses. And at this memorial ceremony there were all these women. Of all ages. And they all cried and left the room, because they couldn't stand it. That was the greatest tribute ..."

"What will the women do at your funeral?"

"If they even show up ... they will probably be screaming at the casket."

Noone screams at the casket. Nancy, daughter from his (the unnamed main character's, not Roth's) second marriage, selflessly carries the funeral, amidst a sea ofm apathy, faux grief, good-old-boy jocularity and even pent-up aggrievement. Then she carries the book. Roth lived another dozen years but Everyman is a kind of pre-posthumous love letter and tribute to Nancy. That and Roth's recollections of an American childhood make the book well worthwhile, if that is not a condescending comment. And despite the plot, the book is neither depressing nor morbid.