Book Review: "The Victim" by Saul Bellow

Perhaps before you read this one, you might want to check out my other reviews on Saul Bellow's books:

Okay, so if you're still here you're probably wanting to read about my thoughts on The Victim instead. Starring a man called Leventhal, this book teaches us about what happens when a chain of seemingly normal events turns into a paranoid scheme in which our main character learns of something that he may or may not have done in the past to ruin someone else's life. In the midst of this is a sick child, a woman who won't take him to a doctor and a wife who has gone off to visit family. Left alone with his thoughts, Leventhal slowly starts backtracking, trying to find the source of his slowly developing madness. I really quite enjoyed this book if I'm going to be honest with you - there's a lot of introspection within.

The book opens with us learning that Asa Leventhal's wife has gone to look after her mother in the South and that Leventhal himself is feeling a bit lonely about it. He visits his sister-in-law and brother who have a sick little kid called Mickey and he checks the kid over asking the parents why he isn't receiving medical attention. The mother, Elena, claims she can look after him better than any nurse can and is frantic about her son. Her other son, Phillip, seems to be slightly neglected but isn't really upset about it - he understands. It will eventually turn out that she needs to give up the son to the hands of doctors or the child might pass away. Bellow writes this as if it were a normal thing to happen, in a chapter where Leventhal takes Phillip out for a day at the movies and the zoo, there's not much more he can do to make it look mundane though there are moments, littering the story that unsettle it.

In the midst of all of these episodes of Asa Leventhal's life is a man called Allbee. Allbee approaches Leventhal one day and states that Leventhal had ruined his life, ruined his employment and is the reason he's living in the gutter. Allbee's wife was murdered and now, the man is a drunk, he's rugged and he's not the man he previously was at all. Leventhal initially dismisses him which only makes Allbee, in his depressed and unstable mental state, begin stalking Leventhal even to the point that he turns up in a restaurant where Leventhal is getting a bite to eat with his nephew, Phillip. Saul Bellow is unsettling the mundane one bit at a time of course, but Leventhal is convinced that because Allbee had been anti-semitic at a party, he would probably escalate that behaviour. Saul Bellow sends Leventhal on a goose chase between friends and big shots to find out why Allbee blames Leventhal for his life falling apart only to learn that there may have been a reason for all of this after all.

I have to say that this book has probably replaced the other Saul Bellow books I have read as the one I think is the best written. Previously, I would have said my favourite Saul Bellow book was perhaps Ravelstein, but The Victim is one of those books that feels like the TV keeps hitting static. Every time Asa Leventhal is close to the answer, he's hiding from the truth, but he's also trying to avoid this madman who thinks he is directly responsible for everything that has ever gone wrong in his life. The disillusionment with immigrant experiences in America, Saul Bellow writes from the point of view of being an outsider and an insider at the same time. One foot in one half and one foot in the other. American but not entirely. The Jewish experience in America during the middle of the 20th century could not be written better by anyone else and honestly, this book proves it to you.

I was glued to it from start to finish because it was so well written. This is one of those books where the hype is definitely something the book can live up to. It is, in my opinion, Saul Bellow's greatest work.

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