The Humbling

Simon Axler, one of the leading American stage actors of his generation, is now in his sixties and has lost his magic, talent , and assurance. His Falstaff and Peer Gynt and Vanya, all his great roles, "are melted into air, into thin air." When his wife leaves him, and after a stint at a mental hospital, he retires to his upstate New York country house and hopes for deliverance - whic arrives in the form of the lithe, vibrant, and ever-subversive Pegeen Stapleford, the daughter of old friends ant twenty-fice years his junior.

In this tight, surprising narrative told with Roth's inimitable urgency, bravura, and gravity, we confront the terrifying fragility of all our life's performances.