Alter ego Nathan Zuckerman doesn’t appear in these pages, andneither is there any sleight of hand blurring the line betweenliterature and life. Instead, here is Roth (NBCC Award-winning TheCounterlife ) at his most humane as he pens a kaddish to his recentlydeceased father, Herman. A vigorous 86-year-old, Roth pere wakes upone morning and half his face is paralyzed; soon he is deaf in one earand the verdict is a benign brain tumor. Surgery is ruled out for theoctogenarian, and the author is a helpless, horrified witness to hisfather’s humiliating demise, “utterly isolated within a body that hadbecome a terrifying escape-proof enclosure, the holding pen in aslaughterhouse.” In a fast-paced, cogent memoir, Roth, whose filialdevotion and awe are tempered with clear-eyed observational powers,ranges far afield and discusses the anti-Semitism of the insurancefirm that employed Herman Roth for 40 years; Herman’s perfectionismand his latter-day disregard for his wife whom he neverthelesselevated to quasi-sainthood after death; Herman’s abandonment of hisphylacteries in a locker at the local YMHA; the author’s quintuplebypass surgery weeks before his father’s death; and Herman’sincontinence and the ample size of his genitals. BOMC alternate.