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The Widows of Eastwick | 
| Author: John Updike
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $9.45
You Save: $15.50 (62%)
Rating:  20 reviews
Sales Rank: 12211
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.4
ISBN: 0307269604
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780307269607
ASIN: 0307269604
Publication Date: October 21, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
More than three decades have passed since the events described in John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick. The three divorcees—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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 15 more reviews...
 A Subtle and Well-Polished Sequel January 1, 2009
Billyjack D'Urberville (USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Updike's original Witches of Eastwick, over 20 years ago, stands as one of his best books. While a first rate realist in his famous Rabbit books and Maples stories, Updike is often strongest in his forays into the semi-mythic and surreal, as evidenced by his early Centaur. The original Witches was a scathing social satire and a frank moral tale, the notoriously unfaithful movie version notwithstanding. The three middle aged witches started out all fun, and then the story moved into true horror and darkness. In one of the best sustained pieces of prose in Updike's career, they drove a man to murder his wife and his own suicide. As the book wound horribly down from that peak, they contrived to kill the couple's young daughter, a rival in love to their warlock master.
Shrewdly, this book is more subtle and nuanced, like a series of Bella Bartok variations as compared to Lizst's Dante symphony. The writing is brilliant as the witches, now elderly, reunite for travels. As usual, the seemingly desert stretches of Updike are crammed with first rate social observation and dry wit. Finally, the old witches cannot resist returning to the scene of their crimes, Eastwick. Updike sustains the lightness even further, which one finally realizes is a tense, ominous deadness. Finally, in a worthy pendant to the brilliant murder scene of the first book, the three recreate their cone of power to unexpected and dire results (I will follow the Amazon rules here & refrain from plot giveaway--especially necessary in a book this subtle and fine-tuned).
Briefly, though, it can be told that what emerges here is a direct play-out of the action of the earlier book. Further, the real scary point being driven home for the witches here is that not only have their own powers waned, but many others in their locale are also dabbling in the black arts, some with malicious aims toward them. The greater point, in this updated social satire, is how witchery and the occult have seamed themselves broadly into the fabric of everyday, mundane American life.
Simply, by toning down the high drama of the first book, Updike achieves a spooky new peak here, in his experiments in magical realism. He makes it virtually convincing on a level of straight realism. A cool, Calvinist chorus voice, speaking for the people of Eastwick, occasionally comments on the action; it is another character in the drama. It never wholly becomes Updike's own narrative voice, but is given fair airplay, so to speak.
At the end, you simply have both narrative voices, and are left with a subtle choice how to view the action -- one or the other -- or perhaps both, simultaneously. Updike as fiction narrator may not display the certainty of his Calvinist chorus voice about the supernatural manifesting in the natural world. But he does clearly believe in moral choices, at least with the same conviction of the classic Greeks, and with a certain acknowledged Christian pedigree. Ultimately, he has come to the same conclusion as three other great American writers -- Melville, Robert Penn Warren, and Scott Fitzgerald -- that our North American civilization may be very broad, and greatly exciting too, but remains a very thin veneer over an absolute, primeval savagery.
 Widow Review December 27, 2008
Janne S. Platt (Mill Valley, CA United States)
Loved a follow up to The Witches of Eastwick- Always wondered what happened to these Women! Also love John Updikes's work!
A Wordsmith for Our Time December 16, 2008
Anthony W. Dopke (west coast of Illinois)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Updike has been around for years and his command of our language is superb. This coupled with his wit and grasp of "the American" way has made him one of the foremost chroniclers of the American psyche.
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