What Henry Roth’s LES foreshadows in the neighborhood today

Call It Sleep by Henry Roth is the best book I’ve read this year…possibly the best this decade…and maybe, just maybe, ever.

First published in 1934, the story was penned by a twenty-eight-year-old Roth and went unnoticed upon its release, overshadowed by the Depression . Set on the Lower East Side in the early 1900s , it captures the immigrant experience with an intimacy and psychological depth that few novels can match.

The book follows David, a young boy , through a frightening, seemingly inescapable tunnel of poverty, fear, and family strain. He grows up with a loveless, tortured father—angry, unstable, constantly fired from jobs —and a mother whose love borders on overbearing . He clings to her desperately, perhaps too much, while his father remains cold and suspect. The family’s arrival in America only complicates matters: they live with relatives, including his mother’s younger sister, whom Roth paints as filthy in both mouth and manner .

David, meanwhile, is timid and frightened of everything , yet still trying to find his way in a world that feels overwhelming. At heart, he is simply a good boy .

His yearning to learn and connect is contrasted with his friendship with Leo, a streetwise boy left largely to his own devices . To David, they seem like friends—but Leo’s motives are different, and he eventually leads David’s cousin into trouble . The relationship underscores David’s vulnerability—his desire for acceptance leaving him open to being misled.

The miracle of the novel lies in how Roth portrays the crushing atmosphere of David’s world—his father’s rage , his mother’s smothering love , the sense of hopelessness—and yet still hints at the possibility of transformation . By the end, we glimpse that the father, so oppressive and angry, may yet find strength to love. If he can turn that rage into tenderness, perhaps he can give David what he needs most: affection . His mother, for all her flaws, is a wellspring of love. Together, if fear and anger don’t tear them apart, the family might just hold .

Layered atop this personal struggle is the immigrant setting of New York—families from different countries, languages, and traditions thrust together . The pressure of not understanding one another, of trying to make a life in a strange land, demands that families cling together—or risk being torn apart .

Reading it today, you can still feel echoes of that world in 10002. The neighborhood carries its own faint pulse of Call It Sleep—tenement buildings, old brick facades that nod to a past century, alleys where you can imagine foreign tongues spoken and religious worship happening behind the walls . Milk carts are long gone, but if you walk early enough, you can just imagine a carriage and the clopping of hooves and the neighborhood coming to life .

That’s what stays with me most: Roth’s Lower East Side wasn’t just a setting—it was the crucible where hardship met hope . And somehow, even after all these years, you can still feel that mix in the air .