Letting Go is Philip Roth's first full-length novel, published just after Goodbye,
Columbus, when he was twenty-nine. Set in 1950s Chicago, New York, and Iowa City,
Letting Go presents as brilliant a fictional portrait as we have of a mid-century
America defined by social and ethical constraints and by moral compulsions
conspicuously different from those of today. Newly discharged from the Korean War
army, reeling from his mother's recent death, freed from old attachments and
hungrily seeking others, Gabe Wallach is drawn to Paul Herz, a fellow graduate
student in literature, and to Libby, Paul's moody, intense wife. Gabe's desire to
be connected to the ordered "world of feeling" that he finds in books is first
tested vicariously by the anarchy of the Herzes. struggles with responsible
adulthood and then by his own eager love affairs. Driven by the desire to live
seriously and act generously, Gabe meets an impassable test in the person of
Martha Reganhart, a spirited, outspoken, divorced mother of two, a formidable
woman who, according to critic James Atlas, is masterfully portrayed with "depth
and resonance." The complex liaison between Gabe and Martha and Gabe's moral
enthusiasm for the trials of others are at the heart of this ambitious first
novel. "[Roth] has the finest eye for the details of American life since Sinclair
Lewis."

Read by Luke Daniels

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