In this funny and chilling novel, the setting is a small town in
the 1940s Midwest, and the subject is the heart of a wounded and
ferociously moralistic young woman, one of those implacable
American moralists whose andquot; goodnessandquot; is a terrible
disease. When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic
failure of a father thrown in jail. Ever since then she has been
trying to reform the men around her, even if that ultimately means
destroying herself in the process. With his unerring portraits of
Lucy and her hapless, childlike husband, Roy, Roth has created an
uncompromising work of fictional realism, a vision of provincial
American piety, yearning, and discontent that is at once pitiless
and compassionate.
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