A review by kirsten48
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth

4.0

My biggest complaint about this book is that it made my mother say the word "masturbation" to me. When I told her what I was about to read she responded with, "Well, I hope you enjoy excessive scenes of masturbation."
Okay, so she wasn't entirely wrong with her cleverly veiled critique, but I found that there was much more to the novel than self-love.
I enjoyed spending a couple of days inside the mind of Alex Portnoy. I am not Jewish, I'm not male, I have a child and visit my parents on a regular basis. I think it is a testament to Roth's consistent writing and character development that I was not only interested in Portnoy but could (at times) relate to him.
This novel will probably not change my life but it was a fun and interesting look inside another world.