WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19TH -- 7 PM

Both expansive and detailed in equal measure, AMERICAN PASTORAL is one of Philip Roth’s masterful novels of the 1990s, a period where it seemed he was incapable of writing a bad book. Focused on Seymour Lvov, a successful businessman and former high school star athlete, the action takes place primarily during the tumultuous ‘60s. Seymour has inherited his father’s glove factory, moved into a country house and begun a family. The idyllic leisure of the American Dream, however, is torn apart when Seymour’s daughter commits an act of terrorism protesting the Vietnam war.

Set amidst the turmoil, disorder and social issues of the ‘60s, AMERICAN PASTORAL is an elegy for the disintegration of the American Dream, where a simple act or a misstep can send the world crashing around you. Propelled by amazing character studies and crackling with Roth’s potent narrative, AMERICAN PASTORAL won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. And its relevance continues: in 2006, it was one of the runners-up in the "What is the Greatest Work of American Fiction in the Last 25 Years?" contest held by the New York Times Book Review.

The Brazos Book Group is excited to read and discuss this “compulsively readable” novel by one of America’s great writers. Come on in and grab a copy. The book group meets on Wednesday, November 19th at 7 P.M.