Felix Roth
Cary Fagan
Imprint: Stoddart | Format: Paperback | Pub Date: 1999 | 277 pages |
ISBN: 0-7737-6049-0
In the summer of 1979, 21-year-old Felix Roth arrives in Manhattan, sent by the Roth family to look after his older brother who is threatening to disappear into a Hasidic sect. But Felix has a plan of his own — to meet the great Yiddish writer Isaac Bashevis Singer and show him his one finished short story.
Felix's quest takes an unexpected turn when he falls for Singer's niece, the beautiful and headstrong Hadassah. But his pursuit of Singer and Hadassah is complicated by the presence of Alice, Felix's demanding lover and the wife of his boss; by a brilliant but possibly deranged scholar; by a stint writing erotica; and by the New York police.
Will Felix show his story to Isaac Bashevis Singer? Will he lose his brother? Will he win Hadassah's affection? Felix Roth is a rollicking trip into high art — and even higher passions.
"A richly satisfying, over-the-top account of a young writer's trip to New York City, Cary Fagan's books is a blast from start to finish."
—Toronto Star
"Here is a touching, vivid, intelligent novel, which is always funny but never crude, and which can, by turns, move readers to tears, dash their illusions, and also give them hope."
— National Post
"Fagan's novel raises important questions about the tradition of Jewish writing and the future it might have ... a provocative statement about the impossibility of being authentic."
— The Globe and Mail