This is the first of Roth’s Zuckerman novels, told from the first-person in the ’70s about a night in the mid-’50s when Zuckerman, age 23, visited his writer idol, E.I. Linoff. An aspiring writer himself, Zuckerman shows up at Linoff’s house, and while the two converse over drinks Zuckerman becomes fascinated by a mysterious young woman temporarily living with Linoff. Amy Bellete is a literary scholar of sorts, and she seems to have her own infatuation with Linoff, who for his part is adamantly committed to his wife.

There’s a narrative gambit in the middle of this book that I don’t want to spoil, but I will say that Roth pulls a kind of magic trick similar in spirit to the ’90s trilogy that includes American Pastoral. With the gambit in The Ghost Writer, Roth is able to explore the nature of art — what it means to have a literary imagination, where that imagination comes from and how it works. It also allows Roth to comment on the writer’s responsibility to his subject matter, because Zuckerman, much like the young Roth, recently had published  a story that alienated him from his family somewhat because of its negative portrayal of Jewish people.

The Ghost Writer is a short, quick read, and I’d recommend it to any aspiring creative writer or Philip Roth fan.