In the Beauty of the Lilies - Softcover

John Updike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140255893 ISBN 13: 9780140255898

Publisher: Penguin Putnam~trade, 1997

Synopsis

One hot afternoon in 1910, the Reverend Clarence Wilmot, standing in the rectory of the Fourth Presbyterian Church, experiences the last vestiges of his faith departing. True to this revelation, Clarence abandons the pulpit and becomes an encyclopedia salesman. What follows is the saga of the Wilmot family, one wandering tapestry thread within the American century. This is the story of Clarence's postman son, of his granddaughter, Esther, whose prayers are always answered and who becomes a twentieth century goddess, and of her son, in whom the passion that has long simmered, hidden in the corners of American life, comes to a boil.

About this title

Review:

When Clarence Wilmot, a Presbyterian clergyman, loses his faith and becomes an encyclopedia salesman, he opens the saga of one American family's twentieth-century relationship with God and all things religious.

From the Inside Flap:

"IT WILL LEAVE YOU STUNNED AND BREATHLESS. . . . With grand ambition, [Updike] not only tracks the fortunes and falls of an American family through four generations and eight decades but also creates a shimmering, celluloid portrait of the whole century as viewed through the metaphor of the movies."
--Miami Herald

"AN IMPORTANT AND IMPRESSIVE NOVEL: a novel that not only shows how we live today, but also how we got there. . . . A book that forces us to reassess the American Dream and the crucial role that faith (and the longing for faith) has played in shaping the national soul."
--The New York Times

"STIRRING AND CAPTIVATING AND BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN . . . [This] new novel displays a depth and a narrative confidence that make one sigh with sweet anticipation. This is the Updike of the Rabbit books, who can take you uphill and down with his grace of vision, his gossamer language, and his merciful, ironic glance at the misery of the human condition."
--The Boston Globe

"AWESOME . . . Updike's genius, his place beside Hawthorne and Nabokov have never been more assured, or chilling."
--The New Yorker

"POWERFUL."
--The Atlanta Journal Constitution

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Putnam~trade
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0140255893
• ISBN 13: 9780140255898
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512