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Title: Great, perhaps, for English majors, but boring for my bookclub.
Review: American Pastoral was repetitious to the Nth degree. I read the Human Stain a few years ago, and it was good. But, in Pastoral, the reader is put through a zillion permutations of possible dialogs between the Swede and a psychoanalyst, and between his daughter Merry and a psychoanalyst, but absent the psychoanalyst: Roth is our psychoanalyst. What he misses, however, is that we simply have to realize that interpersonal dynamics are sometimes beyond our control. The Swede never failed as a father; rather, he failed because he couldn't let go of his sense of responsibility for her.
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