I'm at an utter loss at how to explain this book. Furthermore, I'm confused as to my feelings regarding the writing. Some paragraphs are brilliant, weaving in WASPish commentary with progressive thinking, while others stink of close-minded assholery. I respect and understand that these are the characters' thoughts, but sometimes characters break character with their thinking and it feels like author intrusion. Might not be, but it felt that way.I read this book for my YouTube series Book v. Movi...

I'm suprised by all the reviews of this book that speak of Updike's ability to "get" and fully understand women ... because that seemed to me to be the most blatantly lacking part of this novel. There is not one redeemable female character in this novel. All of the women are vapid, vacuous and more often than not cruel, indifferent and self-absorbed. I am not being prudish, I'm not suggesting that every female character should be a paradigm of female virtue - but what is Updike saying about wome...

I picked up this book because of a few great quotes I'd heard from it. I wasn't disappointed on that front: the prose was beautiful and intelligent.However, the actual story was not. As so many people have said, this book reads like an old man trying to write a feminist book. While I love the idea of women being empowered by their bodies, the descriptions of this were sometimes cringeworthy - period cramps were exaggerated hugely, and the ability to give birth was portrayed as the be-all end-all...

man this dude Updike sure can drive a truck. less-endowed guys often like to drive around in the biggest trucks they can find, making up for that lack yet unaware of the implications of their too-large vehicles; this guy Updike drives his truck called The Witches of Eastwick kitted out with the biggest paragraphs and the longest sentences, musing on whatever the fuck he feels like musing on, his rippling brain proudly on display with no trimming or manscaping, his unshorn philosophical sack hang...

Aside from Updike's beautiful writing, there is not much to recommend the book when you have the option of watching the much better, George Miller-directed movie. While the movie focuses on female friendship and how it's affected by a f*ck-boy, the book introduces a coven of women who have a love-hate relationship with their sexuality and each other.Mind you the movie isn't perfect, but at least it lacks Updile's weird way of bringing body fluids and odors into focus one too many times.

I read this book the way it ought to be read, or at least in the circumstances which are best suited for it.I was away at a beach house for a weekend in the middle of summer and had pretty much nothing to do but lollygag around, smoke cigarettes, and read this book.It's perfect for sunny clear skies and long hours drinking lemonade by the ocean. The writing is crisp, quick and clear. Updike's pretty much encyclopedic when it comes to writing skills and he's doing everything pretty smoothly here:...

this is a book in which characters look in the mirror to see how good-looking they are (particularly to admire their voluptuous breasts, or the breasts of their friends). it is also a book in which john updike tries to write feminist characters but succeeds only in building up a group of women who hate each other, who hate their children, who hate other women, and who are idly superior to the men.ugh.

America in the seventies, a small provincial town, three divorced women following occult practices, a lot of boredom, and suddenly a Man arrives ... "he was the novelty, the magnetism".Updike is above all a style, which changes us from many current novels written without any literary paste! Afterwards, we like it, or we don't like it, but the style has the merit of existing!This style bothered me a lot. I like the beauty of the language, but the sentences that never end in high doses. I have tro...

A highly entertaining read, Updike is poetic, sensual and funny. I saw the movie years ago and could not read about Daryl without seeing Jack Nicholson in my mind. The text is typically and uniquely Updike. I especially enjoyed the surprise of all the musical discussion particularly concerning Bach's Cello Suites coming on the heel's of my reading The Cello Suites by Eric Siblin (quite unexpectedly I might add). While less gripping than the rabbit books and somewhat more tame than Couple, Witche...

I first picked this book up on one of my book speed-dating projects, and went back to it when I needed something to read before falling asleep. For John Updike, this really is quite fluffy. That's a good thing because I've abandoned Rabbit, Run at least twice - I just hate the characters so much that I can't even go along with the author on the journey.I'm not really sure whose side to take on this book, because I have read that this was Updike's response to complaints of misogyny in his Rabbit

High Hopes will almost always set a reader up for a fall. The excitement of chosing a book, THIS book, to begin my month... Witches and spells to celebrate the Halloween spirit of October.(sigh)Having never seen the film, or read any Updike novels before, I really did not know what to expect. I only knew that I expected great things. And sadly, this novel did not deliver many great things at all.(sigh)A little over two weeks spent trying to get into a novel that is only 306 pages long. That's an...

I love this book. Not only does John Updike write heavenly prose, but this book is quite the feminist manifesto. Jane, Sukie, and Alexandra are created by Updike with care and attention, and they are fun, well-drawn personalities to spend a little time with. Updike uses the natural setting of Eastwick, Rhode Island to great advantage. If you feel like getting away to one of those small hamlets on the eastern seaboard, watching a storm come in from the sea, this is the book that will take you the...

I must confess that I was hoping that this book would be a light/fluffy/fun read. I really loved the movie and was looking forward to some light hearted revenge to ease the aching in my brain. Unfortunately for me and my brain, the only things from this book that made it into the movie were the three witches, the horrible rich man (wasn't Jack Nicholson just perfect in this role...totally disgusting but still Jack...you gotta love him), and the game of tennis. Okay, maybe some other stuff too, b...

My introduction to the fiction of John Updike is The Witches of Eastwick and based on 111 pages, it's going to take Elizabeth Montgomery wiggling her nose for me to pick up one of the author's books again. Published in 1984, this literature is set in a quaint Rhode Island town (described down to the flowers or carpeting) where three bewitching women (described down to their facial features and dialects) become involved with a brutish bachelor named Darryl Van Horne. Some might even say he's the

I'm generally a fan of Updike's writing, despite its tendency to flirt with misogyny, but this novel of his is barely readable. Conceptually, it was a fascinating idea, and I can only assume it was the concept, rather than the actual novel, that triggered the idea for the movie.

U, is for Updike. 1 I would like to go back and never purchase this StarIt’s not you it’s me! You know what?! It IS you, it is 100% YOU, Updike!! This book is AWFUL!! There are so many attempts to make this book edgy that it came off entirely underwhelming. I mean, it took me over 2 months just to finish it for fuck’s sake! A 300 page novel… two months?! That is actually unheard of, for me!! I found every reason under the sun (of which there has been lots these last two months) to not read th

Why Updike?This book was more libidinous than a high school boy's locker room.But that's unfair. I'm sure not all locker rooms are this bad.Hyperdetailed. Meandering. The man could write description. But, in so many cases he dwells on images we can do without. Plot and characters go out the window. We get long passages about the exact process of making a sandwich, a few pages for each little maneuver of these grotesquely high-definition bodies moving through space.Occasionally, you run across a

As many people know from the movie, this is a book about three witches in a small town and what happens when a mysterious and inexplicably (largely because he's clearly a bit of a jackass) charming man comes to town. Each of them is a different woman, one mother goddess artist, one a dissatisfied but passionate musician, and the other a light-hearted fluffy soul who has a gossip column at the local paper. Mostly with this plot we're seeing what would happen if the divorced ladies of town found

Ugh. I did not enjoy this book. Read it for a class, otherwise I probably wouldn't have finished it. As it was, the boyfriend had to endure some outraged ranting. The characters were flat in the extreme, when they weren't being petty bitches. And the message! Maybe I was reading it wrong, but the message I got was that women are only powerful when they don't have men. Doesn't matter if they leave the men, or the men leave them. All that matters is the absence. Then, when they have that power, th...

I wish I loved anything as much as John Updike loved the sight of his own words on the page.The Witches of Eastwick has A Point To Make about the role of women in white, middle class, 1960s America. And it makes this point by embracing one of history's oldest conceits: independent women are evil. They're witches. And while the magical divorcées of Eastwick aren't burned at the stake of accused of turning young men into toads, they come close to the mid-twentieth-century version thereof. Accused