When Dawn saw my post on 5 Minutes for Mom about the Indignation movie, she reminded me that she reviewed the book years ago. Thanks to Roadside Attractions for sponsoring the Indignation Prize Pack Giveaway.
Here’s an excerpt from Dawn’s 2009 review of Indignation:
Sometime last December, The Washington Post featured their compilation of the best books of 2008 in their Sunday Book World section, and I marked Indignation by Philip Roth as one to check out. A little over a month later, I couldn’t remember what appealed to me from the short description of the book, but there it was at my local library, so in the bag it went. From the opening passage, I realized that this was going to be a very different kind of read than what I usually lean toward.
This short novel focuses on a character, Marcus Messner, at the cusp of adulthood as he attempts to escape the watchful eye of his father. Sounds very typical of a 19 year old, but the twist is that Marcus is quite an innocent, well-behaved young man who has no desires to do anything even slightly rebellious. In fact, he simply wants to go to college and study, yet his father’s increasing level of obsessive worrying about his welfare is frustrating and offensive to him, the only son who has been nothing but ‘the obedient child’ his entire life. The course of the novel follows the consequences of each particular choice Marcus makes over the approximate time span of a year. The framework of the storytelling is unconventional as well, told in the first person but with a twist that is made apparent about 50 pages into the book.
Be sure to head over to 5 Minutes for Mom to read about the movie, watch the trailer, and enter to win the giveaway of a $50 gift card, the movie tie-in edition of the book and the movie soundtrack:
