This is, arguably, one of the most memorable lines in Philip Roth’s latest novel, ‘Everyman’, an elegant – if at times bleak – exploration of age, loneliness, and the inescapable finality of death. With compassion and unflinching realism, Pulitzer-Prize winning Roth dissects the ancient struggle between a dying man and his mortality.

The novel begins, in fact, with the unnamed protagonist’s funeral in a small run-down Jewish cemetery where, years earlier, his immigrant parents and grandparents were buried. The funeral is a grim affair. Aside from a handful of relatives and a few well-wishers, nothing much remains of a lifetime of relationships and a successful career in advertising: he has been stripped of whatever it was that made him a man. The only mourner who provides a detailed glimpse into his personality is his beloved older brother, Howie, who takes us back to another age, the Depression, and his deceased brother’s fascination with the diamonds and timepieces their father used to sell in their small high-street store in Elizabeth.

This brief prelude gives a tantalizing glimpse of Roth’s Everyman and some insight into his past relationships. At his funeral, for example, are two sons, “Randy and Lonny, middle-aged men from his turbulent first marriage, very much their mother’s children, who as a consequence knew little of him that was praiseworthy and much that was beastly and who were present out of a sense of duty and nothing more.” There is also Nancy, his daughter, and her mother, Phoebe, his shy, soft-spoken second wife. The only outsider at the funeral is Maureen, the private duty nurse who took care of him after one of his heart surgeries.

It isn’t long before we find out what his relations were like with each of these individuals. The novel continues from the perspective of the now-dead protagonist, as he reflects over his past and mourns his dwindling physical strength and sexual vitality. Possessed of above-average good looks, he has never had a problem attracting women. Three marriages and several liaisons later, he realizes that he is still very much alone, the only woman in his life his steadfast daughter, Nancy. As for his sons, they persist in holding a grudge against him for leaving their mother. As he reflects over this he admits, “No one could say there wasn’t enough sadness to go around or enough remorse to prompt the fugue of questions with which he attempted to defend the story of his life.”

But his life is not unlike that of his contemporaries: he is an average seventy-one-year-old retired middle class professional who lives in a retirement community near the Jersey shore. In his retirement, he paints, which has been a lifelong dream of his, and holds art classes. However, in a moment of startling self-analysis he realizes:

It was as though painting had been an exorcism. But designed to expel what malignancy? The oldest of his self-delusions? Or had he run to painting in an attempt to deliver himself from the knowledge that you are born to live and you die instead? Suddenly he was lost in nothing, in the sound of the two syllables “nothing” no less than in the nothingness, lost and drifting, and the dread began to seep in.

Roth’s ;Everyman;, like the Medieval mortality play to which it alludes, is essentially about a person – any and all people – faced with the horrifying reality of death and nothingness. Unlike the 15th century Everyman, however, Roth’s protagonist cannot fall back on the comforting reassurance of religion or spirituality; he must look elsewhere for the redemption he seeks. His contemplation of death eventually takes him back to the small cemetery where his parents are buried. Unlike them, he has no belief system, such as Judaism, which could make his eventual confrontation with the void less frightening. However, he finds something strangely comforting about being near the bones of his dead loved ones:

He did not feel as though he were playing at something. He did not feel as though he were trying to make something come true. This was what was true, this intensity of connection with those bones.