The Widows of Eastwick

Zusatztext “Ingenious . . . This isn’t writing. It is magic.”— New York Times Book Review “With its fiery energy and wicked humor! The Widows of Eastwick is a truly enjoyable book to read [and] might just be [John Updike’s] best novel since 1990’s Pulitzer Prize—winning Rabbit at Rest .”— Kansas City Star “Dazzling Updikean prose . . . Here’s a bet his work will keep fresh for generations! inciting laughter! wonder and sensuous shivers.”— Los Angeles Times “An amusing romp . . . made unexpectedly moving by the author’s profundity and his renowned dexterity with language . . . [Updike is a] master of making us want to guffaw and weep in the same sentence.”— Houston Chronicle “Elegant prose and unfailing wit . . . There is moral courage in these pages. And kindness too.”— Washington Times Informationen zum Autor JOHN UPDIKE was the author of more than sixty books, eight of them collections of poetry. His novels, including The Centaur, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in 2009. Klappentext 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. Leseprobe i. The Coven ReconstitutedThose of us acquainted with their sordid and scandalous story were not surprised to hear, by way of rumors from the various localities where the sorceresses had settled after fleeing our venerable town of Eastwick, Rhode Island, that the husbands whom the three Godforsaken women had by their dark arts concocted for themselves did not prove durable. Wicked methods make weak products. Satan counterfeits Creation, yes, but with inferior goods.Alexandra, the oldest in age, the broadest in body, and the nearest in character to normal, generous-spirited humanity, was the first to become a widow. Her instinct, as with so many a wife suddenly liberated into solitude, was to travel—as if the world at large, by way of flimsy boarding cards and tedious airport delays and the faint but undeniable risk of flight in a time of rising fuel costs, airline bankruptcy, suicidal terrorists, and accumulating metal fatigue, could be compelled to yield the fruitful aggravation of having a mate. Jim Farlander, the husband she had conjured for herself from a hollowed pumpkin, a cowboy hat, and a pinch of Western soil scraped from inside the back fender of a pickup truck with Colorado plates that she had seen parked, looking eerily out of place, on Oak Street in the early 1970s, had, as their marriage settled and hardened, proved difficult to budge from his ceramics studio and little-frequented pottery shop on a side street in Taos, New Mexico.Jim’s idea of a trip had been the hour’s drive south to Santa Fe; his idea of a holiday was spending a day in ...

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Ingenious . . . This isn t writing. It is magic. New York Times Book Review

With its fiery energy and wicked humor, The Widows of Eastwick is a truly enjoyable book to read [and] might just be [John Updike s] best novel since 1990 s Pulitzer Prize winning Rabbit at Rest. Kansas City Star

Dazzling Updikean prose . . . Here s a bet his work will keep fresh for generations, inciting laughter, wonder and sensuous shivers. Los Angeles Times

An amusing romp . . . made unexpectedly moving by the author s profundity and his renowned dexterity with language . . . [Updike is a] master of making us want to guffaw and weep in the same sentence. Houston Chronicle

Elegant prose and unfailing wit . . . There is moral courage in these pages. And kindness too. Washington Times

Product details

• Authors: John Updike
• Publisher: Knopf
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 21.10.2008
• EAN: 9780307269607
• ISBN: 978-0-307-26960-7
• No. of pages: 320
• Dimensions: 148 mm x 220 mm x 28 mm
• Series: ALFRED A. KNOPF
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature