Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly
Conversations, most of them between an American writer living in London and his English mistress, make up what PW called ``a clever comedy of manners that segues--as is the author's wont--into a disquisition on the distinction between literature and life.'' (Feb.)
Library Journal
Philip, a successful, middle-aged, and highly opinionated Jewish-American novelist, moves to a small flat in London to work on his new book. He begins seeing a married Englishwoman in his spare time, and soon he has filled a notebook with their pre- and post-coital conversations. When he publishes this document as a novel, his indignant mistress accuses him of deceiving both her and his public. The book ends with Philip's impassioned defense of self-referential fiction. The issue, however, is not self-referential fiction in general but simply Roth's own peculiar version of it, which consists mostly of unabashed editorializing through the mouthpiece of Philip. A textbook example of the novel as soapbox, Deception will appeal only to Roth's most steadfast supporters. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/90. --Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
New York Times Book Review
This swift, elegant, disturbing novel…stands at the extreme of contemporary fiction.”
From the Publisher
"This swift, elegant, disturbing novel ... stands at the extreme of contemporary fiction." —The New York Times Book Review
"Deception is itself deceptive, as elegant and ingenious as anything in The Ghost Writer or The Prague Orgy." —Hermione Lee, New Repubic
"A fiendishly clever piece of work ... an amazing feat.... He's invented the purest speech, the most convincing cadences, of any American novelist." —William Pritchard, Hudson Review
