I Married a Communist is a Philip Roth

Philip Roth

Philip Milton Roth is an American novelist. He gained fame with the 1959 novella Goodbye, Columbus, an irreverent and humorous portrait of Jewish-American life that earned him a National Book Award...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 concerning the rise and fall of Ira Ringold, known as "Iron Rinn." The story is narrated by Nathan Zuckerman

Nathan Zuckerman

Nathan Zuckerman is a fictional character who appears as the narrator or protagonist of many of Philip Roth's works of fiction.-Character:...

, and is one of a trio of Zuckerman novels Roth wrote in the 1990s depicting the postwar history of Newark, New Jersey

Newark, New Jersey

Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...

 and its residents.

Ira and his brother Murray serve as two immense influences on the school-age Zuckerman, and the story is told as a contemporary reminiscence between Murray and Nathan on Ira's life. Although a communist, Ira became a star in radio theater

Radio drama

Radio drama is a dramatized, purely acoustic performance, broadcast on radio or published on audio media, such as tape or CD. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story...

. Personal conflicts with his wife, McCarthyite

McCarthyism

McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...

 politicians, a gossip columnist, and his daughter-addled and manipulative wife all combine to destroy Ira and many of those around him.

Claire Bloom controversy

Some reviewers, especially those in the British press such as Rachelle Thackray of The Independent and Linda Grant of The Guardian, consider the character of Eve Frame — antisemitic wife who destroys Ira — to be a barely disguised riposte at Roth's ex-wife, Claire Bloom

Claire Bloom

Claire Bloom is an English film and stage actress.-Early life:Bloom was born in the North London suburb of Finchley, the daughter of Elizabeth and Edward Max Blume, who worked in sales...

, for her unflattering memoirs, which portrayed Roth as unable to bottle his vanity and incapable of living in the same household with Bloom's daughter, Anna Steiger

Anna Steiger

Anna Steiger is a British opera singer. She is the daughter of Claire Bloom, a British film and stage actress and Rod Steiger, an American Academy Award-winning actor best known for his intense performances in such films as In the Heat of the Night, On the Waterfront and Doctor...

. However, Frame is portrayed fairly sympathetically in the novel. She destroys Ira's career (unintentionally) after being manipulated by his enemy, Brydon Grant. She later attempts to make amends for having done this.

Linda Grant writes of the similarities between Claire Bloom and Eve Frame:

Frame is a Jewish actress, so is Bloom. Frame's second husband is a financier, so was Bloom's. Eve Frame has a daughter who is a harpist, Bloom's girl is an opera singer. Ira tells the daughter to move out, Roth did the same. Ira has an affair with the daughter's best friend; Roth, Bloom alleged, came on to her own daughter's best friend.

She argues I Married a Communist, "is not a novel", but rather, "an angry, bitter, resentful mess by a man who might have taken another course."