description: Roth's award-winning first book instantly established its author's reputation as a writer of explosive wit, merciless insight, and a fierce compassion for even the most self-deluding of his characters. Goodbye, Columbus is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin, he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills, who meet one summer break and dive into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella is accompanied by five short stories that range in tone from the iconoclastic to the astonishingly tender and that illuminate the subterranean conflicts between parents and children and friends and neighbors in the American Jewish diaspora.
language: English
title: Goodbye Columbus
titlecomplete: Goodbye Columbus
characters: Brenda Patimkin, Neil Klugman
genres: Fiction, American, Short Stories, Jewish, Literature, Classics, Novels, 20th Century, Novella, Literary Fiction
ratings_count: 19630
places: Newark, New Jersey, Short Hills, New Jersey
awards: awardedAt: -315590400000
name: National Book Award
category: Fiction, awardedAt: -315590400000
name: National Jewish Book Award
category: Fiction
publisher: Bantam Books