| Product Summary | | Format: Hardcover | | ISBN: 9780307269607 | | Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group | | Publish Date: 10/21/2008 | | Buy.com Sku: 207886434 | | Item#: | | Dimensions (in Inches) 8.75H x 6L x 1.25T | | Pages: 320 |
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| | | More than three decades have passed since the events described in John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick. The three divorcées—Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie—have left town, remarried, and become widows. They cope with their grief and solitude as widows do: they travel the world, to such foreign lands as Canada, Egypt, and China, and renew old acquaintance. Why not, Sukie and Jane ask Alexandra, go back to Eastwick for the summer? The old Rhode Island seaside town, where they indulged in wicked mischief under the influence of the diabolical Darryl Van Horne, is still magical for them. Now Darryl is gone, and their lovers of the time have aged or died, but enchantment remains in the familiar streets and scenery of the village, where they enjoyed their lusty primes as free and empowered women. And, among the local citizenry, there are still those who remember them, and wish them ill. How they cope with the lingering traces of their evil deeds, the shocks of a mysterious counterspell, and the advancing inroads of old age, form the burden on Updike’s delightful, ominous sequel.
Annotation:
More than two decades have passed since Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart, and Sukie Rougemont, a coven of witches in the small Rhode Island town of Eastwick, last cast their spells and hexes in an attempt to find and keep the perfect man. At the end of Updike's THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK the three women went off in different directions, each with a different husband. Now, in THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICK, their husbands are dead, and they find themselves reunited back in Eastwick, concerned less with sex than with their aging bodies, and disillusioned with how the dreams of the 1960s have shriveled into a materialistic, bland yuppiedom. When the devilish Christopher Gabriel returns, the widows of Eastwick must resurrect their magical powers. Revisiting his so-called "feminist" novel of 1984 (many critics actually considered it misogynist), John Updike explores themes of death, aging, and increasing disconnection from the contemporary world. Though the novel includes much satire and black magic hokum, the underlying atmosphere of loss is powerfully imagined. Selected by the New York Times Book Review as a Notable Book of 2008.
| Praise| "[Updike's] leading ladies are more compelling not as supernatural sorceresses but as ordinary women, haunted by the sins of their youth, frightened of the looming prospect of the grave and trying their best to get by, day by day by day." - Michiko Kakutani 10/20/2008 "[John Updike] still wrings more from a sentence than almost anyone else. His sorcery is startlingly fresh, page upon page." - Sam Tanenhaus 10/26/2008 |
| Author Bio| John Updike | | John Updike, the son of a schoolteacher father and a mother who wanted to be a writer, was raised in Reading, Pennsylvania--a town not unlike Brewer, where, many years later, he situated his famous character, Rabbit Angstrom. Updike graduated from Harvard, where he nourished "an un-Harvardian desire to be a cartoonist," as he put it in an interview, and where he was turned down "repeatedly" for Archibald MacLeish's writing class. He was also editor of Harvard's famous humor magazine, the Lampoon. After college, Updike worked for a few years on the staff of The New Yorker before he began publishing fiction. He is the author of over 50 books, including not only novels but collections of short stories, poems, and criticism--even children's books. His novels have been almost invariably critical and popular successes, and his tetralogy about Rabbit Angstrom (RABBIT, RUN; RABBIT REDUX; RABBIT IS RICH; RABBIT AT REST) has assured him a prominent place in American literary history. Updike is a disciplined writer who has said that he can't enjoy the rest of the day until he's written at least a thousand words. Considered one of the masters of contemporary fiction, he has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Updike is the father of four children and has been married twice. He died in 2009 from lung cancer. |
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