Just started reading Philip Roth’s famous novel The Human Stain and am already enchanted by the language he uses, and the direct, true way that he describes the human condition. Take for example, this paragraph:

There is something fascinating about what moral suffering can do to someone who is in no obvious way a weak or feeble person. It’s more insidious even than what physical illness can do, because there is no morphine drip or spinal block or radical surgery to alleviate it. Once you’re in its grip, it’s as though it will have to kill you for you to be free of it. Its raw realism is like nothing else.

That last sentence could describe the whole book thus far.

I’m only a quarter of the way through but just had to share my early love for this novel. Roth uses such evocative phrases – “the contamination of desire” is wonderful – that I will be sure to read his other novels when finished with The Human Stain.