S - Softcover

Updike, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0449216527 ISBN 13: 9780449216521

Publisher: Fawcett Crest, 1989

Synopsis

S. is Sarah Worth -- doctor's wife, North Shore matron, loving mother, and now (suddenly!) ardent follower of a Hindu religious leader known as the Arhat. As this brilliant and very funny novel opens, Sarah is fleeing the confinement of her suburban life to become a sannyasin (pilgrim) at her guru's Arizona ashram.

In the letters and audiocassettes that Sarah sends to her husband, daughter, mother, brother, best friend -- to her psychiatrist and her hairdresser and her dentist -- master novelist John Updike gives us a witty comedy of manners, a biting satire of life on a religious commune, and the story -- deep and true -- of an American woman in search of herself.
From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

From the Back Cover

"A Tour De Force." -- The New York Times

"One of Updike's lightest, funniest, and sliest fictions -- a comedy about the sneaky economies of the spirit." -- The New Yorker

"Entirely satisfying and entertaining with a good half-dozen hilarious twists and surprises at the end for everyone...John Updike has given us with S., his 12th and funniest novel." -- Chicago Sun-Times

"Delightful and penetrating...[John Updike] is the chief chronicler of the life and times of the modern American middle class -- and perhaps its most important literary conscience." -- The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Immensely clever...The novel glimmers with the wry intelligence one has come to associate with Updike's vision." -- The Boston Globe

About the Author

John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming from Hamish Hamilton.His novels, stories, and non-fiction collections have won have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award and the Howells Medal. Updike graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year at Oxford's Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of staff at the New Yorker, and he lived in Massachusetts from 1957 until his death in January 2009.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fawcett Crest
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0449216527
• ISBN 13: 9780449216521
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 299