The Witches of Eastwick - Softcover

Updike, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0449912108 ISBN 13: 9780449912102

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1996

Synopsis

“John Updike is the great genial sorcerer of American letters [and] The Witches of Eastwick [is one of his] most ambitious works. . . . [A] comedy of the blackest sort.”—The New York Times Book Review

Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream. Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwick—and through the even darker fantasies of the town’s collective psyche.

“A great deal of fun to read . . . fresh, constantly entertaining . . . John Updike [is] a wizard of language and observation.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Vintage Updike, which is to say among the best fiction we have.”—Newsday

About this title

From the Publisher:

9 1.5-hour cassettes

From the Back Cover:

"A Great Deal Of Fun To Read...Fresh, constantly entertaining...The text also abounds with delightful aphorisms for these times...John Updike remains a wizard of language and observation."

-- The Philadelphia Inquirer

"A wicked entertainment with lots (and lots) of sex...In book after book, Updike's fine, funny impressionistic art strips the full casings of everydayness from objects we have known all our lives and makes them shine with fresh new connections."

-- The New Republic

"A dazzling book...A very funny and very unsettling story of what witchcraft might look like if it were around today...Updike is devilishly clever."

-- Los Angeles Times

Selected By Time Magazine As One Of The Five Best Works Of Fiction Of The Year

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0449912108
• ISBN 13: 9780449912102
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 306