The Witches of Eastwick

I literally THREW this book when I finally finished it.
GAH! LAWD have mercy on my soul. It took me over a MONTH to read this book!
How I failed myself:
Step 1: I went into this with very high expectations
Step 2: I ignored reviews – they warned me.
Step 3: I forced myself to be miserable and finish the book when I should have quit!
Step 4: This was a VERY poor choice for an October read.

(please note I rarely curse in my reviews, but I am literally this mad)

Please rename this book to the Bitches of Eastwick. They are not Witches. Not in the least! The title is very misleading. Sure, yeah, they are supposed to be witches so there were like 2 spells thru out the book. But in reality, they are just plain nasty miserable women, past their show more prime, who are the sort of jaded shallow human being that I despise in real life. Im sick of them!

So why am I giving this two stars, instead of 1? Well despite me loathing the characters and the content, and the entire concept of this book…
Its Updike, and he has beautiful language twined up in the middle of the bullshit. grr. So you have to struggle neck deep in bullshit to pull out these tiny little gems.

Example: (Ill probably add plenty more examples at a later time)

“The universe is a pointless, self-running machine, and we are insignificant by-products, whom death will tuck back into oblivion, with or without holy fanfare.”

But this beautiful language was bogged down by really disgusting shit! Too many innocent animals died, too many visuals of disgusting disease ridden penises, really nasty attitudes and then the very explicit detailed murder of an innocent woman for me to enjoy anything.
I think Updike is quite pleased with himself for making us all suffer and squirm.
Updike, I literally hate you right now for this crap you made us suffer thru! I was SO excited to read this. And VERY let down. I read Brazil, and it is STILL one of my all-time favorite books.
No, I will not read the sequel to this book. I would rather sit in a bathtub full of ice in the middle of the coldest day in January, thank you.
Moving onto more pleasurable things.
GOOD RIDDANCE! show less

I've never seen the movie, but after finishing this I wasnt able to envisage Cher, Pfeiffer and Kidman as the characters therein. This is an absolutely stunning read, as Updike takes his usual (but always brilliantly crafted) themes of sex and dalliance in a New England setting...and adds a touch of Halloween.
Three divorcees - mothers in their 30s with jobs and kids and dogs in a small Rhode Island town- meet up for drinks, gossip and a bit of witchcraft. There's earth-mother Alexandra, with her sculpture, health fears and flabby thighs, sparky red-head journalist Sukie and the most unknowable and dark cellist Jane.
Then one day wealthy stranger Darryl van Horne moves into town; his scientific interests make him something of a wizard show more and all three make a play for him.
Updike can't write a bad novel; I gravitate more to his tales of real people, but this was unputdownable. Emphatically not about comedy or special effects (I think of the movie and feel unmotivated to watch it) with themes of murder, suicide, death-wishing and orgiastic playtimes at Mr Horne's mansion. All set to read the sequel.... show less

I was struck throughout reading this book how the author, a man, wrote a story about women and primarily narrated through women's POV so intimately. This book is definitely not another cookie cutter witch story; it's characters and plot details will be with me for a long time. However, I am disturbed by the overall plot arc.

This story begins with a group of women who gain the power of witches when they rid themselves of their husbands. They spend the majority of the book misusing that power, doing some very evil or just creepy things, yet never rising above the need to have one pathetic man or another in their lives. The story ends when they give up their powers and marry again. I'm really not sure what the author is saying here - that show more women can't rise above or be something good independent of a man? That even being a witch, which has always (for good or ill) symbolized female empowerment, doesn't make a woman less than petty and needy? This remains a fascinating story painted in all kinds of grays, but the lack of a strong or good woman in the story bothers me. Still can't rate it less than 4 stars, for its utter uniqueness. show less

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 show more 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.... show less

Originally, I told myself I'd give this book to the 10% mark to grab me, and then I'd DNF it. I did make it to 40%! But as I reflected on it this weekend, I realized I still couldn't say I was actually enjoying it at all on pretty much any level. Time to cut my losses.

Turn-Offs, in order of irritation:
- a male author writing female characters rhapsodizing about their newfound embrace of womanhood as they got older, got divorced, became witches. Bold move, Cotton. WORSE, there were 2 different places in which a female character muses on that natural healing nature/instinct of women... sexual healing, natch. The more a guy is a depressed, useless, schlubby, unattractive loser, the more they just want to open their bodies to him to show more provide him that sexual healing. Of course. That screams male wish-fulfillment waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than it does female sexual empowerment!

At least 2/3 of the women are sleeping with married men (not their first time doing that, either...) with no compunctions about it, but neither do they seem especially happy or fulfilled by it. And then they all sort of compete for/share in the "affections" of the newcomer to the town, who is this abrasive, overbearing, mansplaining dick.

- hard to catch any of the historicity of the setting. Peak sexual revolution and social upheaval, and none of it more than barely mentioned in passing a couple times. What's the point?

- sentences for days. I don't think of myself as the kind of person typically bothered by superfluous details in books (I like all the food descriptions in ASoIaF!), but damn, those were a lot of words to say not a lot about nothing very important, over and over. So many semicolons.

- it was hard to get a grip on how said magic existed. I'm willing to give some leeway on this, but this is an otherwise real-life historical ("Vietnam era") setting with otherwise normal life crap going on, but their magic is definitely real, apparently. It's just taken for granted that they found this outlet, which... if this is an integral part to their new identities... And I mean, I'm cool with unexplained magic, and authors/creators often go wrong in trying to justify or explain the inexplicable. But this is not set up necessarily as "the world is magic, deal with it," so it's just this odd choice that's not even the point of anything, so why...? show less

This book ends less happily than the movie; in fact, the book and the movie go in very different directions after a certain event.

What I will mainly remember about this book is its unsympathetic treatment of the main characters, who are all women. It is not that the characters are inherently dislikable, though some become dislikable in the course of the story (while others do not, or do so to a lesser degree). It is that the writing is, somehow, disparaging towards them; regardless of what about them is being described, the words and sentences suggest an air of foolishness or absurdity or ridiculousness. (The men don't escape unscathed, but they aren't developed nearly as much, either.) Literary archetypes of women (virgin, whore, show more bitch, &c.) are strongly invoked, but the overall effect is to create caricatures of those archetypes rather than to provide any serious insight into Woman or women. About the only affirmative aspect of the main characters' portrayal is their strength of character: though the unpleasantnesses in their characters vitiate that to a greater or lesser extent. In a sort of a inversion, it seems that the men characters are weak and merely responsive, whereas almost all of the women characters (main or not) are quite strong and self-willed, but this does not redound to their credit.

In a similar connection, the other thing I am likely to remember is the sex. It's not a pornographic book, but sex is one of (if not the) main motifs. The writing about sex-the-act, about characters' attitudes towards sex, about characters' own sexuality, and about the sexual relations between characters all, to me, sound very 1970s, which is perfectly understandable given the date of publication. In this respect it has a sort of anthropological or historical interest, at least to one who didn't experience 1970s sexual environment first-hand. In another respect, though, given the emphasis on women characters, the prominence of sex is unsurprising but trite, and contributes to the general air of disrespect towards the characters.

What I still, for the moment, remember about this book was its interesting rendering of witchcraft, which is mostly implied through concrete, witchy actions, but there are enough to draw some conclusions about the witchcraft generally.

Overall, the book seems mainly to be a character study. The plot is quite simple, and seems to exist mainly to provide situations around which the characters can be developed. The tone reminds me somewhat of Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. show less

The Witches of Eastwick – John Updike
4 stars
This is Updike’s 1984 novel about three divorced, suburban women who happen to be witches. The story is set in an imaginary Rhode Island town during the early 70’s. Updike paints a gossipy picture of the private and not so private interactions of Eastwick’s inhabitants. I was immediately attracted to the wry humor of Updike’s descriptions. Each of these witches discovered their powers upon separating from their husbands. They each have the remains of a husband preserved in some diabolical and symbolic way. I loved the humor of the spells cast to sabotage the opposing teams while they played doubles tennis with the town’s new and mysterious bachelor. The whole town of Eastwick lives show more and breathes in the many descriptive passages. I couldn’t help enjoying the rich quality of the language. I just didn’t like any of the characters and I didn’t really want to know the intimate details of their sordid affairs. My 4 star rating for the book doesn’t reflect how much I enjoyed the story. I didn’t really like it, but like it or not, I have to acknowledge the skill and beauty of the writing. show less