Philip Roth is one of America’s greatest living writers – some would say the greatest. But Julia Keller says that despite the undeniable genius of his words, there is a discomfort in reading Roth, and it stems from the fact that “his women have no souls. [They] are mere mirrors to men. Echoes and shadows. Pale parallels… the fact that Roth gives short shrift to half the human race is crushingly sad. Were Roth a lesser writer, it wouldn’t matter; his greatness, however, transforms that lack from a simple failing into a reverberating anguish.”