S

Updike has a gift for the ingenious simile and evocative description, but no sense of proportion or tact. His overfurnished paragraphs are filled with freckles like pencil shavings and "esses" like a just-extinguished match and strings of raindrops played by the wind like fingers on a harp until you're visualizing a harpist stubbing out a match on a newly-sharpened pencil but not the scene he is actually describing. Or you lose the train of a conversation as he pauses to describe the boar's head on a bottle of Gordon's gin & the rind on the Gouda cheese or to note that the dish rack from which an inconsequential dish is taken is made of rubber-coated wire. Sometimes the detail arguably reveals character or setting or comments on show more overconsumption or whatever, but frankly most of the time it seems superfluous & indulgent: Updike is just offering endless description because that is the only thing he can do better than anybody else.

Aside from the allurements (such as they are) of Updike's style, this novel feels rather miscellaneous, a loose assortment of descriptions of the weather, exposition-heavy telephone conversations, lore about witchcraft (I wanted more of this), Pynchonesque talk about the second law of thermodynamics, middle-aged group sex, Hawthornesque character names (Arthur Hallybread, etc.), and some fairly effective magical-realist set-pieces. There's plenty to sink your teeth into, but the whole is less than the sum of the parts. While Updike brings in the historical notion of the "witch" as an invention of patriarchy, its persecuted other (the midwife, etc.) it is unclear how this is supposed to connect to these witches, who do, in fact, practice real magic, and use it mainly to hurt other women. And Darryl Van Horne's disquisitions on pop art, alternative energy, the second law of thermodynamics, and parasitic worms don't seem, in the end, fully germane, any more than the pedestrian musicological analysis of Bach's second cello suite that grinds the novel to a halt about thirty pages from the end.

Symptomatic of the disconnectedness of the novel is the narrative voice, which drifts between Faulknerian collective narration (the "we" of Eastwick) and conventional third-person omniscience.

In the end we're left with the descriptive passages, which can be comically overdone but can also be striking. A minor novelist with a major style, as Bloom (rightly, for once) opined. show less

I can admire what Updike did here, and I enjoyed the epistolary format (which really made the book, in my opinion), but I can't say that I felt this stood up to Updike's other works--or, those that I've read, anyway. It felt a little bit like a literary experiment, more than a book I could really engage with and enjoy, and it quickly became fairly predictable. I suppose it's something I might recommend to English majors and writers thinking to experiment in this territory, but otherwise, it's probably not something I'd recommend. It is what it is, and it's well done and beautifully written, but it's likely one I'll remember for the wrong reasons (in my opinion).

Reading this book twenty-five years after its publication was a real pleasure. Mr. Updike captured the fun, sweet decade of the eighties. The novel is a great recap of the eighties and a primer on at least one version of commercial Buddhism - Oh, and irony - lots of delicious irony. The issues raised are somewhat dated, but if you were around in the eighties, the situations will be familiar.

S. is a highly interesting read, if for no other reason than the slightly unusual style of epistolary dominance.

However, given this style, I wanted to be able to attach myself to S. The satiric nature of the work did not allow that.

Odd book, and so much Buddhist words that I skipped some paragraphs. But liked it. Updike is funny and I think the Wasp-Jew theme, men women, well done. Curious about how Updike saw the world, and how waspishness was part of him.

A doctor's wife from the northshore goes to an ashram in Arizona to find enlightenment and finds all the usual problems that humans have, but does manage to throw off many of the deceptions of a more conventional life. Lots of fun satire.

Susan is a North Shore matron who leaves her cheating, surgeon, husband to join an Ashram in Arizona after studying Buddhism with some friends. She tells her story via letters sent to her husband, daughter, best friends, mother, brother, etc. At first Susan finds peace at the ashram until she discovers her yogi for the sham that he is. An often funny story which was a bit long.