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“John Updike is the great genial sorcerer of American letters [and] The Witches of Eastwick [is one of his] most ambitious works. . . . [A] comedy of the blackest sort.”—The New York Times Book Review
Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream. Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwick—and through the even darker fantasies of the town’s collective psyche.
“A great deal of fun to read . . . fresh, constantly entertaining . . . John Updike [is] a wizard of language and observation.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Vintage Updike, which is to say among the best fiction we have.”—Newsday
Disturbing in the sex department and rambling on and on, the book attempts to save itself with clever dialogue and narration, but the book is extremely boring until the third act. ( )
It has been a while since I was so unsure how exactly I felt about a book. Updike is obviously very smart and dang the guy can turn a phrase -- he has pages and pages of heavy lifting sentences composed of phrase after descriptive phrase, long paragraphs describing houses, yards, the town of Eastwick, and the bodies and mannerisms of our three protagonist witches and the banal and slightly-magical world in which they live. Interspersed with these grand paragraphs are fast-paced conversations, rambling dialogue, and meandering thoughts. Plus more than a little sex, often suddenly and roughly introduced after the reader was lulled into the pacing of the aforementioned rigorous descriptions. The three witches are all divorcees living in the small Rhode Island city of Eastwick in the Vietnam-era. They have kids that they mostly resent and ignore, and ex-husbands that were sacrificed for their wives' independence. You see, breaking free from their traditional roles as housewives unleashed witchy powers, sexual urges, and a real dislike for conventionality. Mostly they use their magic for small acts of revenge (untying shoelaces, killing barking dogs, making bugs and leaves come out of their enemies mouths), or convenience (turning milk into cream in a diner, messing up each other's tennis games). The three of them have formed a little coven and get together once a week to gossip, drink, and make passes at each other. Then a mysterious stranger, Daryl Van Horne, moves to town and shakes things up for all three witches. It soon becomes clear that he is also a bit magical and.... weird. And soon the weekly get togethers move to Daryl's house with lots of hot tubbing, sexuality, and witchy jealousy, especially when non-witch (or is she?) Jenny comes on the scene. There are some interesting, but also confusing shifts in point of view. The book is generally told in third person through the perspective of one of the three witches, but a couple (very disturbing) scenes follow a local man who one of them is having an affair with and his wife. And at the mid-point of the novel and briefly towards the end we also get a "we" perspective from the town itself, apparently looking back at the events in the novel. Finally, the ending is not what I wanted at all from these characters and, this is a me problem only, there is a lot of cancer stuff in the book that I could have done without. And yet I didn't hate it! Although I also didn't really like it. I never saw the movie version of the book, but from what I gather, the book is pretty different. I want to watch it now to see exactly how -- plus I love me some Cher.... ( )
Most people probably have see the 80s movie with Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon, and Michelle Pfeiffer. They probably liked the movie like me. However, once you read the book, you'll see how different the book actually is. For starters it takes place in the 60s and not the 80s. Also (minor spoiler) Darryl is bisexual. Yet Jack Nicholson was born to play he role if you ask me and they even got quotes from the book too. Yes the movie was rated R, but this book is beyond R. Watching the movie you don't get the Updike feel, but the book is defiantly Updike. I still find it odd this is one of his only fantasy books. He mostly writes plan fiction like Rabbit Run (which is far better in my opinion). ( )
Mr. Updike takes ''sisterhood is powerful'' at its word and imagines it literally. What if sisterhood really is powerful? What will the sisters use their ''powers'' for? And what - given human nature, of which Mr. Updike takes not too bright a view - what then? Luckily these witches are only interested in the ''personal,'' rather than the ''political''; otherwise they might have done something unfrivolous, like inventing the hydrogen bomb.... ''The Witches of Eastwick'' is an excursion rather than a destination. Like its characters, it indulges in metamorphoses, reading at one moment like Kierkegaard, at the next like Swift's ''Modest Proposal,'' and at the next like Archie comics, with some John Keats thrown in. This quirkiness is part of its charm, for, despite everything, charming it is. As for the witches themselves, there's a strong suggestion that they are products of Eastwick's - read America's - own fantasy life.
He was a meikle blak roch man, werie cold. —Isobel Gowdie, in 1662
Now efter that the deuell had endit his admonitions, he cam down out of the pulpit, and caused all the company to com and kiss his ers, quihilk they said was cauld lyk yce; his body was hard lyk yrn, as they thocht that handled him. —Agnes Sampson, in 1590
Dedication
First words
"And oh yes," Jane Smart said in her hasty yet purposeful way; each s seemed the black tip of a just-extinguished match held in a playful hurt, as children do, against the skin. "Sukie said a man has bought the Lenox mansion."
Quotations
For the last time...the exact blue of such a July day falls into my eyes. My lids lift, my corneas admit the light, my lenses focus it, my retinas and optic nerve report it to the brain. Tomorrow the Earth's poles will tilt a day more toward August and autumn, and a slightly different tincture of light and vapor will be distilled.
Last words
We meet it turning the corner where Hemlock meets Oak; it is there when we walk the beach in off-season and the Atlantic in its blackness mirrors the dense packed gray of the clouds: a scandal, life like smoke rising twisted into legend.
“John Updike is the great genial sorcerer of American letters [and] The Witches of Eastwick [is one of his] most ambitious works. . . . [A] comedy of the blackest sort.”—The New York Times Book Review
Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream. Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwick—and through the even darker fantasies of the town’s collective psyche.
“A great deal of fun to read . . . fresh, constantly entertaining . . . John Updike [is] a wizard of language and observation.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Vintage Updike, which is to say among the best fiction we have.”—Newsday
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