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A review by michael__
The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike
4.0
Is it wild that I think I enjoyed this more than The Witches of Eastwick? I remember the collective disappointment when this novel was first released (lord, almost a decade ago), but I found myself pleasantly surprised.
Widows opens with our (anti?)heroines over three decades removed from the havoc they wreaked in Witches, dispersed around the country and widowed from the husbands they conjured for themselves after the end of the latter novel. Lonely and despondent, they slowly start to reconnect, traveling the world for a small while and then eventually settling in a vacation home in Eastwick to rifle up old memories. Too bad their awful reputation didn't fade along with their youth.
The thing with Updike is that I'm finally starting to not expect a ton of plot going into his novels. Don't get me wrong, there is a small thread of story that eventually hits a climax here, but this novel ends up being a meditation on loss, growing older, and facing your demons. This worked for me, though, because there's something so poignant about Updike revisiting some of his most beloved characters at the end of their lives at the end of his own life (he died a few months after this was published). Do I necessarily like and/or have sympathy for Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie? No, but it's easy to appreciate their desperation to find salvation for the wrongs they've committed before their time is up. Regardless of how I feel about them, I feel like I know these characters and their strange little town, and even though I just read Witches a few months ago, Updike writes it so well that I felt like I was nostalgically checking in on old friends from decades ago.
Gone are (most of) the fun antics from the previous novel, but there's such an overarching sense of longing to the story - longing for the past, longing for absolution, longing for something more - that it's hard to not be absorbed in these characters' various internal struggles.
Widows opens with our (anti?)heroines over three decades removed from the havoc they wreaked in Witches, dispersed around the country and widowed from the husbands they conjured for themselves after the end of the latter novel. Lonely and despondent, they slowly start to reconnect, traveling the world for a small while and then eventually settling in a vacation home in Eastwick to rifle up old memories. Too bad their awful reputation didn't fade along with their youth.
The thing with Updike is that I'm finally starting to not expect a ton of plot going into his novels. Don't get me wrong, there is a small thread of story that eventually hits a climax here, but this novel ends up being a meditation on loss, growing older, and facing your demons. This worked for me, though, because there's something so poignant about Updike revisiting some of his most beloved characters at the end of their lives at the end of his own life (he died a few months after this was published). Do I necessarily like and/or have sympathy for Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie? No, but it's easy to appreciate their desperation to find salvation for the wrongs they've committed before their time is up. Regardless of how I feel about them, I feel like I know these characters and their strange little town, and even though I just read Witches a few months ago, Updike writes it so well that I felt like I was nostalgically checking in on old friends from decades ago.
Gone are (most of) the fun antics from the previous novel, but there's such an overarching sense of longing to the story - longing for the past, longing for absolution, longing for something more - that it's hard to not be absorbed in these characters' various internal struggles.