The Assistant

The Assistant, Bernard Malamud's second novel, originally published in 1957, is the story of Morris Bober, a grocer in postwar Brooklyn, who "wants better" for himself and his family. First two robbers appear and hold him up; then things take a turn for the better when broken-nosed Frank Alpine becomes his assistant. But there are complications: Frank, whose reaction to Jews is ambivalent, falls in love with Helen Bober; at the same time he begins to steal from the store.

Like Malamud's best stories, this novel unerringly evokes an immigrant world of cramped circumstances and great expectations. Malamud defined the immigrant experience in a way that has proven vital for several generations of writers.

"His best novel . . . The Assistant is as tightly written as a prose poem." --Morris Dickstein in Leopards in the Temple: The Transformation of American Fiction 1945-1970

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 07/07/2003
Pages: 246
Weight: 0.54lbs
Size: 8.22h x 5.52w x 0.68d
ISBN: 9780374504847

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 5.9
Point Value: 13
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 68899 / Assistant


Review Citation(s):
New York Times Book Review 08/26/2007 pg. 22

About the Author
Bernard Malamud (1914-86) wrote eight novels; he won the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award for The Fixer, and the National Book Award for The Magic Barrel. Born in Brooklyn, he taught for many years at Bennington College in Vermont.