Philip Roth

I'v just finished rereading Philip Roth's the Human Stain. It's a great book, as are all his books. The craft in his writing and the subtle cross flow of plot and sub plot are unrelenting. He continually raises questions in your mind about the "human condition" and how we are often two personalities running in parallel trying to appear as one thing whilst carrying the ghost of our other self.
A great writer and I believe Roth is just that, not only tell you a tale, but expose the untold complexities of living a life surrounded by people. In the Human Stain he describes a successful Dean of College carrying the lie of his ethnicity until it breaks him. The secret becomes larger than the fact and destroys him. All of us have secrets, all of us project lives that are not quiet what they seem and few of us would have the courage to break the mould of how we have nurtured ourselves to others with a proclamation that it is all a sham. That is what the book is about that and the deceit that went into sustaining the lie.
He writes powerfully about human relationships about the counter poise they produce in finding compromise. And having found the compromise are unhappy with the distance it has brought us from "ourselves".
All his books are revelatory. You put them down and think about what they have to say about us, not so much a critique but a confirmation !