Superb - Rated 
This was an enormously enjoyable read. From the opening paragraph, you know you are in the hands of a master. He title refers to death, the fate that must meet everyman and is borrowed from a 15th century play of the same name. The book is a meditation on mortality and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that the mortal coil is heir to - to totally butcher Hamlet's soliloquys. Roth shows himself as a literary stylist at the height of his powers as he tackles "the Big Adios". The narrative in this short, page turner of a book carries you headlong to the grave -where it must inevitably end.
Middle class tragedy - Rated
When he's bad, he's very very bad ("Sabbath's Theatre") and when he's good he's wonderful. This is from the good end of the Roth oeuvre, telling the story of a middle-aged man's descent into illness, self-realisation and death, devoid of all comfort about just rewards or afterlives.
A small gem - not easy to read if you are yourself a middle aged bloke with the occasional dodgy health problem, but still great.
The man with no name - Rated 
I chose this novel to read with my students in a monthly book club we have in the language school where I work. I still do not know their opinions because we have not held our meeting yet, but I do know mine.This book clearly makes an impression; you cannot finish it and not be sure of its impact on you.
I think the title "Everyman" is perfect. Of course, the main character's life is unique, but it succeeds in exemplifying aspects all our destinies have in common. The zest for life, but for a perfect life untouched by sadness and illness. The lack of control over our actions on occasion. The looking at oneself and saying "How did I get here? How did I become this person?. This is not what I set out to do in the first place".
We were all once the perfect child with a world of possibilities ahead of us, and on our own or because of our circumstances achieved some dreams and lost some others.
I don't think the main character is a bad man. He's an endearing human being like any other who maybe chose the wrong way, or maybe just lived his reality as he had to.
It's a masterful touch to never give him a name, even though he is the central character. This makes empathy so much easier.
A lovely book, full of life even if it talks about Death.
Connection, Responsibility, Attraction, Mistakes, Physical Decline and Passing - Rated
A popular exercise among self-help gurus is to ask their students to imagine themselves attending their own funeral. What would the student like to be said then? Who should attend?
Everyman reminded me of that insightful thought experiment.
Everyman opens at our narrator's funeral. There are some former colleagues from his advertising career, neighbors from the retirement village where he had been living, his daughter, two sons from a first marriage, his older brother and sister-in-law, his second wife (and his daughter's mother) and a former private duty nurse from a prior illness. You'll read his daughter's words which tell you the family's history.
Then, the narrator takes over to relate his life. The primary themes are family connection, taking on adult responsibilities, physical attraction to the opposite sex, life mistakes, physical decline and passing beyond this life. The perspective is that of an elderly man in not very good health, who objects to his health challenges.
The book is remarkably spare for a Philip Roth novel. I liked the contrast to his more elaborate works. This book is about the monologue in one's own head, and you don't need a lot of other material to capture that mind-set. A few incidents, scattered here and there, simply serve to elaborate on the narrator's character and perspective.
But the book transcends its narrator's life to touch on the important life passages and challenges we all have or will face. If you are like me, you'll find yourself re-examining your own life and plans.
As the book jacket points out, the title is intended to refer to an anonymously written fifteenth-century allegorical play themed to the process of summoning the living to death. You can add to your enjoyment of Roth's work if you read (or re-read) that play.
The story also captures the sense of loneliness that many feel who lack the comfort of daily contact with their families and strong religious beliefs about the meaning of life.
To draw you a word picture of this book, Everyman reminded me of an elaborate tombstone that contains numerous references to the deceased . . . from which our imaginations fill in the gaps.
A nail in the coffin - blissfully brief. - Rated
The finest line in this book is a quotation from the protagonist's father as expressed by the protagonist (paraphrased) "you should give when your hands are still warm". The second best line I caught on was "you gotta do what you gotta do" though it has not sunk into the protagonist's head that he's gotta do death, willingly, with all his affairs settled (ideally - Ibn Batuta did write that he has travelled all over the world and the only place he yet had to visit was the grave) ... and as this protagonist/character has, he does not have much to complain of except the fear of letting go. I suppose it the fear we all have, and that all creatures go through when they disappear - to the satisfaction of some and as a generality in dealing with people, to the dissatisfaction of colleagues and loved ones. It was Steve Jobs who on realising he may have only days to live said later "I can say ... that nobody wants to die" - his cancer turned out to be, by some miracle, curable.
Nihilistic it is - Roth writes with the conviction of an atheist for whom death is precisely that - the end, the final curtain. This book is actually quite depressive reading. Though consoling words may be helpful, Roth scars the reader with the reality of the readers own mortality.
I can't see that the character has much to complain of. He had good parents, New York watch/jewellery merchants. He was beloved, by his parents, by his brother, by his wife/ves and a string of lovers. The salacious portions - indicating Roth's Danish heritage - is once with a relatively insensitive if utterly sexy Danish blonde. The characters proclivity for female flesh leavens and spices a sombre, reflective look back at his life in the third person - the typical sex and death convergence.
Short and undivided, Everyman does not compare it is true quite as favourably with Tolstoy's shorter book - The Death of Ivan Illych ... as another reviewer has pointed out (amazon.com). There are probably quite a few books in this genre - though not biographies which are often celebrations of people's lives and deaths. Here is Roth's own, dark, brooding fear coming through and this darkness perhaps makes the book a poignant if perhaps uninformed narrative.
The afterlife for Roth remains an open and shut case. Why does he not conclude logically that life is death - that we interact with so many animated corpses on a daily basis? Maybe he could have rubbed it in even more rather than the envy of looking at age and sickness compared to the vitality and desirability of youth and young women's breasts. The protagonist is jealous of his brother's good health - I expect the brother could have written a warmer book and at least Roth makes this a possibility.
I was proud to read my first and who knows last Roth novel. 9/11, Jewishness, the art of gravedigging all highlights in this expose of a regret. As an indulgence, I reproduce the text of a poem - which is evocative of the sentiment in this work:
Corrections
I take a red pen to my life, cross out words like daughter, mother wife; strike out all those oughts and buts, the endless hopeful lies. Every day it's getting shorter. Even vanity fades along with bloom and giggle and slender. Last thing to go is my mind, never mine anyway. Like everything else, a story to keep myself uptight and coccupied, on the right side of my demon teachers. Each page is a horror of blots, omissions and errors. I hear myself thinking Could Try Harder. Try to ignore it, harder and harder; not to set my heart on ticks and stars, on how it might feel to be recycled, a clean sheet of paper, a fresh draft; someone else's name at the end. Linda France, Tomorrow's Moon (not available for sale)
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