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Eastwick #1
The Witches of Eastwick
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.
307 pages, Paperback
First published April 12, 1984
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19565 people want to read
About the author
John Updike
819books2,371followersJohn Hoyer Updike was an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well known for his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, having published 22 novels and more than a dozen short story collections as well as poetry, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in The New Yorker since the 1950s. His works often explore sex, faith, and death, and their inter-relationships.
He died of lung cancer at age 76.
He died of lung cancer at age 76.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,681 reviews
November 11, 2008
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 women, when all the female characters in this novel are largely abhorrent? Awful mothers, absent lovers - even the females on the periphery (often the jilted, the abandoned, the victims), understandably wind up shrill, judgemental, bitter. Even the men are flat, not explored.
Presumably this is all part of Updike's social commentary on ... something. But what exactly that might be remains, at this point, unclear to me.
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 women, when all the female characters in this novel are largely abhorrent? Awful mothers, absent lovers - even the females on the periphery (often the jilted, the abandoned, the victims), understandably wind up shrill, judgemental, bitter. Even the men are flat, not explored.
Presumably this is all part of Updike's social commentary on ... something. But what exactly that might be remains, at this point, unclear to me.
April 1, 2025
The Witches of Eastwick is a caustic comedy of manners written in the highly fanciful style and boasting quite a juicy language.
It starts with a telephone conversation�
And a union of three female friends resembles more a coven than anything else� And with whom do witches associate? They prefer to rub shoulders with the devil� And this mentioned above male certainly suits for a devil’s role�
Meanwhile witch’s thoughts move in mystical ways�
And His Satanic Majesty of the tale is Darryl Van Horne� A name with a couple of hints� ‘Darryl� of the French origin vaguely means ‘darling’� And of course there is no devil without horns� And ‘horny� for sure�
The witches cast spells� Indulge their lovers� But their attention is arrested by the newcomer�
His mansion is a travesty of kitsch� A locus of the bad taste mockery� A junky parody of hell� A grotesque temple of the sexual revolution� All of them are there and taking a hellishly hot bath�
Witches are wicked. The devil is insidious.
Caricatures of individuals add up into a caricature of society.
It starts with a telephone conversation�
“And oh yes,� Jane Smart said in her hasty yet purposeful way; each s seemed the black tip of a just-extinguished match held in playful hurt, as children do, against the skin. “Sukie said a man has bought the Lenox mansion.�
And a union of three female friends resembles more a coven than anything else� And with whom do witches associate? They prefer to rub shoulders with the devil� And this mentioned above male certainly suits for a devil’s role�
Meanwhile witch’s thoughts move in mystical ways�
Things fall into threes. And magic occurs all around us as nature seeks and finds the inevitable forms, things crystalline and organic falling together at angles of sixty degrees, the equilateral triangle being the mother of structure.
And His Satanic Majesty of the tale is Darryl Van Horne� A name with a couple of hints� ‘Darryl� of the French origin vaguely means ‘darling’� And of course there is no devil without horns� And ‘horny� for sure�
…a bearish dark man with greasy curly hair half-hiding his ears and clumped at the back so that his head from the side looked like a beer mug with a monstrously thick handle� He was out to make an impression.
The witches cast spells� Indulge their lovers� But their attention is arrested by the newcomer�
His mansion is a travesty of kitsch� A locus of the bad taste mockery� A junky parody of hell� A grotesque temple of the sexual revolution� All of them are there and taking a hellishly hot bath�
Alexandra walked to the tub edge, saw the water was about four feet deep, let her towel drop, and slipped in. Hot. Scalding. In the old days, before burning her completely at the stake they would pull pieces of flesh from a witch’s flesh with red-hot tongs; this was a window into that, that furnace of suffering.
Witches are wicked. The devil is insidious.
Caricatures of individuals add up into a caricature of society.
September 3, 2017
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 devil. Of the 1,000 approaches to that story, Updike's is so pontifical and pumped up with its own magnificence that it ceases to be ridiculous and just becomes unreadable.
Set in the late 1960s--where there is no love lost between the author and those kids growing their hair long, protesting the war and listening to those damn Beatles records--the title characters are Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart and Sukie Rougemont, divorcees or widows who've all shacked up with seemingly every able bodied man in Eastwick. Artisan, musician and writer, the witches of Eastwick are less committed to their craft--creative craft or witch craft, of which Lexa seems the most talented--as much as they're casting for their next male conquest. They're each repulsed by Van Horne, the swarthy, super rich New Yorker, but all attracted to him as well.
Let me start with what this novel is not. This novel is not progressive in its portrayal of liberated women, with Van Horne breaking up the Thursday coven meetings the three women hold weekly. Their development hinges on their relationship to various men. They're not independent enough to see through Van Horne's wealth or have the self-respect to reject his mansplaining (Don Draper would approve of Van Horne's opinions on gender studies). This novel is not horror or fantasy fiction in any reliable way and not particularly paranormal, though Lexa can alter the weather and will her enemies into acts of bad luck. And finally, this novel is not readable.
She returned to putting up Mason jars of spaghetti sauce, sauce for more spaghetti than she and her children could consume even if bewitched for a hundred years in an Italian fairy tale, jar upon jar lifted steaming from the white speckled blue boiler on the trembling, singing round wire rack. It was, she dimly perceived, some kind of ridiculous tribute to her present lover, a plumber of Italian ancestry. Her recipe called for no onions, two cloves of garlic minced and sauteed for three minutes (no more, no less; that was the magic) in heated oil, plenty of sugar to counteract acidity, a single grated carrot, more pepper than salt; but the teaspoon of crumbled basil is what catered to virility, and the dash of belladonna provided the release without which virility is merely a murderous congestion. All this must be added to her own tomatoes, picked and stored on every window sill these weeks past and now sliced and fed to teh blender: ever since, two summers ago, Joe Marino had begun to come into her bed, a preposterous fecundity had overtaken the staked plants, out in the side garden where the southwestern sun slanted in through the line of willows each long afternoon. The crooked little tomato branches, pulpy and pale as if made of cheap green paper, broke under the weight of so much fruit; there was something frantic is such fertility, a crying-out like that of children frantic to please. Of plants tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot. Picking the watery orange-red orbs, Alexandra felt she was cupping a giant lover's testicles in her hand. She recognized as she labored in her kitchen the something sadly menstrual in all this, the bloodlike sauce to be ladled upon the white spaghetti. The fat white strings would become her own white fat. This female struggle of hers against her own weight: at the age of thirty-eight she found it increasingly unnatural. In order to attract love must she deny her own body, like a neurotic saint of old? Nature is the index and context of all health and if we have an appetite it is there to be satisfied, satisfying thereby the cosmic order. Yet she sometimes despised herself as lazy, in taking a lover of a race so notoriously tolerant of corpulence.
There are longer paragraphs in The Witches of Eastwick and shorter paragraphs, but this is representative of Updike's focus, which isn't on character or storytelling but on his own brilliance at turning a word. It's writing that is quite pleased with itself and satisfied with how well it has women figured out. Despite the publishing date, this feels like a relic of the Swinging Sixties. A film adaptation released in 1987 took place in the present day and starred Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer. Nicholson's charms and special effects are the focus, while the relegation of the female characters to fashion accessories are a holdover from the obtuse book.
Set in the late 1960s--where there is no love lost between the author and those kids growing their hair long, protesting the war and listening to those damn Beatles records--the title characters are Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart and Sukie Rougemont, divorcees or widows who've all shacked up with seemingly every able bodied man in Eastwick. Artisan, musician and writer, the witches of Eastwick are less committed to their craft--creative craft or witch craft, of which Lexa seems the most talented--as much as they're casting for their next male conquest. They're each repulsed by Van Horne, the swarthy, super rich New Yorker, but all attracted to him as well.
Let me start with what this novel is not. This novel is not progressive in its portrayal of liberated women, with Van Horne breaking up the Thursday coven meetings the three women hold weekly. Their development hinges on their relationship to various men. They're not independent enough to see through Van Horne's wealth or have the self-respect to reject his mansplaining (Don Draper would approve of Van Horne's opinions on gender studies). This novel is not horror or fantasy fiction in any reliable way and not particularly paranormal, though Lexa can alter the weather and will her enemies into acts of bad luck. And finally, this novel is not readable.
She returned to putting up Mason jars of spaghetti sauce, sauce for more spaghetti than she and her children could consume even if bewitched for a hundred years in an Italian fairy tale, jar upon jar lifted steaming from the white speckled blue boiler on the trembling, singing round wire rack. It was, she dimly perceived, some kind of ridiculous tribute to her present lover, a plumber of Italian ancestry. Her recipe called for no onions, two cloves of garlic minced and sauteed for three minutes (no more, no less; that was the magic) in heated oil, plenty of sugar to counteract acidity, a single grated carrot, more pepper than salt; but the teaspoon of crumbled basil is what catered to virility, and the dash of belladonna provided the release without which virility is merely a murderous congestion. All this must be added to her own tomatoes, picked and stored on every window sill these weeks past and now sliced and fed to teh blender: ever since, two summers ago, Joe Marino had begun to come into her bed, a preposterous fecundity had overtaken the staked plants, out in the side garden where the southwestern sun slanted in through the line of willows each long afternoon. The crooked little tomato branches, pulpy and pale as if made of cheap green paper, broke under the weight of so much fruit; there was something frantic is such fertility, a crying-out like that of children frantic to please. Of plants tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot. Picking the watery orange-red orbs, Alexandra felt she was cupping a giant lover's testicles in her hand. She recognized as she labored in her kitchen the something sadly menstrual in all this, the bloodlike sauce to be ladled upon the white spaghetti. The fat white strings would become her own white fat. This female struggle of hers against her own weight: at the age of thirty-eight she found it increasingly unnatural. In order to attract love must she deny her own body, like a neurotic saint of old? Nature is the index and context of all health and if we have an appetite it is there to be satisfied, satisfying thereby the cosmic order. Yet she sometimes despised herself as lazy, in taking a lover of a race so notoriously tolerant of corpulence.
There are longer paragraphs in The Witches of Eastwick and shorter paragraphs, but this is representative of Updike's focus, which isn't on character or storytelling but on his own brilliance at turning a word. It's writing that is quite pleased with itself and satisfied with how well it has women figured out. Despite the publishing date, this feels like a relic of the Swinging Sixties. A film adaptation released in 1987 took place in the present day and starred Jack Nicholson, Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer. Nicholson's charms and special effects are the focus, while the relegation of the female characters to fashion accessories are a holdover from the obtuse book.
March 30, 2019
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 hanging full and heavy, his thoughts motile and vigorous, salty, manifold. and he drives like there are no rules, let alone a speed limit. so what does all that say about him? is this guy overcompensating like all those other guys with their too-large, too-kitted out vehicles? nah, his cocky nakedness shows me he's not; he's proud to strip down and show his all, putting what is usually hidden out there to be admired. the perhaps less well-endowed turn away, annoyed and repulsed, his big paragraphs and long sentences and jutting prose an affront. his man-musk is strong and not for everyone.
but isn't this book supposed to be about women?
the writing does astound, and that includes his characters, female and male alike. the central protagonist Alexandra is impressively layered, a ruthless earth mother who casually fucks around and just as casually kills chipmunks and puppies. and all of the crazy digressions are a marvel, so easy to get lost riding these dreamy trains of thought, so hard to disembark. Witches of Eastwick is, unquestionably, a high quality product. it has a scary intelligence to match its killer prose. this slim book is intimidatingly dense, thick with ideas. this guy Updike can write.
but can he write about women?
yes and no. yes, he can write about women. of course he can write about women. he can write about so many things, including women. he is an amazing writer and his thoughts on gender are never less than interesting, just as the women in Witches of Eastwick are never less than primal forces, never less than powerful.
except they are not truly powerful, being prey to their pettiest emotions. except that, as "primal forces", they are purely reductive archetypes. these women crave men. they succor men, enchant them, fuck them, become their muses; these witches are the way men prove their manhood and the reason for them to get up in the morning and steal away from their wives. these witches only find happiness when they find the right man. these witches are a man's best form of support like a dog is man's best friend. these witches only harm and kill animals and other women.
it's a joke that this book was ever considered to be even remotely feminist. it's laughable that cockproud Updike thought he was writing "about female power, a power that patriarchal societies have denied." it's hilarious that critics considered this "an intelligent engagement with feminism" when it defines its women almost solely by their relationships with men. I guess 1984 was a tough year for female empowerment if this book was considered pro-feminism. testosterone writes about estrogen and the result is women seen through a very male eye.
4 stars for the fully engorged writing.
2 stars for the limp ideas.
and so 3 stars overall.
Thank you Davytron for recommending this book! My issues aside, this was a rich and thoroughly enjoyable experience. At least while reading it. My problems came up after the book was put down. The act itself was exciting and memorable; it wasn't until later that the malaise and the feeling of hollowness set in. Typical for me, I suppose. I'm a guy after all.
but isn't this book supposed to be about women?
the writing does astound, and that includes his characters, female and male alike. the central protagonist Alexandra is impressively layered, a ruthless earth mother who casually fucks around and just as casually kills chipmunks and puppies. and all of the crazy digressions are a marvel, so easy to get lost riding these dreamy trains of thought, so hard to disembark. Witches of Eastwick is, unquestionably, a high quality product. it has a scary intelligence to match its killer prose. this slim book is intimidatingly dense, thick with ideas. this guy Updike can write.
but can he write about women?
yes and no. yes, he can write about women. of course he can write about women. he can write about so many things, including women. he is an amazing writer and his thoughts on gender are never less than interesting, just as the women in Witches of Eastwick are never less than primal forces, never less than powerful.
except they are not truly powerful, being prey to their pettiest emotions. except that, as "primal forces", they are purely reductive archetypes. these women crave men. they succor men, enchant them, fuck them, become their muses; these witches are the way men prove their manhood and the reason for them to get up in the morning and steal away from their wives. these witches only find happiness when they find the right man. these witches are a man's best form of support like a dog is man's best friend. these witches only harm and kill animals and other women.
it's a joke that this book was ever considered to be even remotely feminist. it's laughable that cockproud Updike thought he was writing "about female power, a power that patriarchal societies have denied." it's hilarious that critics considered this "an intelligent engagement with feminism" when it defines its women almost solely by their relationships with men. I guess 1984 was a tough year for female empowerment if this book was considered pro-feminism. testosterone writes about estrogen and the result is women seen through a very male eye.
4 stars for the fully engorged writing.
2 stars for the limp ideas.
and so 3 stars overall.
Thank you Davytron for recommending this book! My issues aside, this was a rich and thoroughly enjoyable experience. At least while reading it. My problems came up after the book was put down. The act itself was exciting and memorable; it wasn't until later that the malaise and the feeling of hollowness set in. Typical for me, I suppose. I'm a guy after all.
September 23, 2015
U, is for Updike.
1 I would like to go back and never purchase this Star
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 this book.
Things I did instead of reading The Witches of Eastwick:
(In no particular order)
- Joined a pool league
- Joined ANOTHER volunteer committee
- Slept (in the middle of the day, for no actual reason)
- Re-watched several cheesy chick flicks and dance movies
- Started and finished watching 3 seasons of ‘Dance Academy� (and then started RE-watching them)
Okay this ONE probably has something to do with Jordan Rodrigues, as well.
- Watched several episodes of ‘Archer� with the Beast
- Read at least 10 other books (only three of which were time sensitive Buddy-reads)
- Went for walks, a LOT of walks
- Went to Costco and the grocery store ON PURPOSE, when we didn’t need much of anything!
- Went bathing suit shopping at the mall O.o
Okay, I am going to assume you get my point! I found every excuse NOT to read this book because Updike’s writing is distancing and his characters are extremely difficult, nay IMPOSSIBLE, to give a shit about. I am lost as to what even is the point of this book�.
There are three witchy women doing magic of varying degrees and having copious affairs with married men; there is death and destruction; there is selfishness, cruelty and the skeevy underbelly of humanity’s tendency to judgment and heartlessness BUT it all amounts to nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. And Updike’s writing is so bland that the characters just sort of zombie-walk around while all this is going on, without any depth or comprehension. Sukie, Alexandra and Jane never come to life, and it’s extremely disappointing.
I sincerely hope that my horrible book slump will be over now that I am done THIS.FUCKING.BOOK.
Category: A book with magic.
March 9, 2024
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 a style that changes us from many current novels written without literary paste! Afterward, we like or don't like it, but the type has the merit of existing!
This style bothered me a lot. I like the beauty of the language, but the sentences never end in high doses. I have trouble, to the point where sometimes, I reread it, eliminating specific clauses from the sentences to get back to basics.
The story's construction is ingenious. For example, Updike sometimes unfolds the story through the heroines' phone conversations.
Some descriptions, for example, of landscapes, are finely chiseled and quite poetic. The atmosphere that emerges is captivating, like a falling fog, and the more it becomes opaque, the more it envelops everything it touches. You can feel the spray and the rising storm.
From the plot's point of view, I felt a little vintage side, sometimes quite funny. "This Sukie, all the same, at her age, thirty-three, not wearing a bra, what nerve !"
This old-fashioned side gives the story some charms, but I was disappointed. Even if some scenes are quite erotic, the plot remains lukewarm.
I quickly turned the pages when Brenda's sermon came; the intensity rose, rising, slowly, slyly, swirling faster and faster, and nothing?
There are downsides, but I am delighted with this reading, even if it did not capsize me.
Updike is a style that changes us from many current novels written without literary paste! Afterward, we like or don't like it, but the type has the merit of existing!
This style bothered me a lot. I like the beauty of the language, but the sentences never end in high doses. I have trouble, to the point where sometimes, I reread it, eliminating specific clauses from the sentences to get back to basics.
The story's construction is ingenious. For example, Updike sometimes unfolds the story through the heroines' phone conversations.
Some descriptions, for example, of landscapes, are finely chiseled and quite poetic. The atmosphere that emerges is captivating, like a falling fog, and the more it becomes opaque, the more it envelops everything it touches. You can feel the spray and the rising storm.
From the plot's point of view, I felt a little vintage side, sometimes quite funny. "This Sukie, all the same, at her age, thirty-three, not wearing a bra, what nerve !"
This old-fashioned side gives the story some charms, but I was disappointed. Even if some scenes are quite erotic, the plot remains lukewarm.
I quickly turned the pages when Brenda's sermon came; the intensity rose, rising, slowly, slyly, swirling faster and faster, and nothing?
There are downsides, but I am delighted with this reading, even if it did not capsize me.
October 10, 2015
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.
April 15, 2025
I'd watched this movie when it came out (I had a little crush on Michelle Pfeiffer - who didn't?, and I was just starting to discover Susan Sarandon). I was still traumatized by Jack Nicholson's performance in The Shining. This movie only cemented him in my mind as the scariest man in Hollywood (and then he did Joker, and I stopped watching his movies for many years).
So I had no reason to want to read this book, but I recently saw a five-star review from a ŷ friend (thanks Vit!), and I thought I'd give it a try. I have to agree with him that the writing is pretty awesome. I also have to 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 for all the implied social commentary. However, I give it a three because I didn't love the antisemitism, the ableism, the body shaming, sexism, or the racism that underpinned that society. I get that it was part of the characterization of the town, but I think it could've been done without the blatant slurs.
In today's world, I think the more apt title would be B1tches of Eastwick. B1itches means something different today than even a decade ago, so I stand by that.
So I had no reason to want to read this book, but I recently saw a five-star review from a ŷ friend (thanks Vit!), and I thought I'd give it a try. I have to agree with him that the writing is pretty awesome. I also have to 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 for all the implied social commentary. However, I give it a three because I didn't love the antisemitism, the ableism, the body shaming, sexism, or the racism that underpinned that society. I get that it was part of the characterization of the town, but I think it could've been done without the blatant slurs.
In today's world, I think the more apt title would be B1tches of Eastwick. B1itches means something different today than even a decade ago, so I stand by that.
May 27, 2008
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: aphorisms, characters, vibrancy, plot, vividness. The stuff is alive. You can see it all happening in your mind's eye. I was in Connecticut, and the book is set in Rhode Island, though one Yankee beach town is about the same as another, I reckon. I've been to enough.
But there's something very charming (no pun intended) about reading the lives of some pretty sexy MILFs who have some magical powers, spunky libidos, and a whole bunch of whistful ruminations about the passage of time and the sagging bounty of youth.
Fun, quick, a real pleasure to read, and kinda hot to boot.
Only reason I really gave it two stars rather than three or four (the above criteria is more than enough to put it up there) is because, ultimately, that's pretty much all I can say about it. Not much to take away from this one, I say, since...well...I haven't actually taken much away from it than merely this.
May 1, 2013
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, they will use it to do petty and awful things. They will also sleep around, because even though being without men is what gave them the power in the first place, they certainly can't actually be happy without men in their lives. They will spend their days gossiping and neglecting their children entirely, even though they seem to do absolutely nothing else with their lives. Then, when their idiocy leads them to do something truly reprehensible, they will decide that they were better off with husbands in the first place, and go off and get married, thus surrendering all their powers and negating the whole point.
Wow, I feel positively inspired.
John Updike, I don't think you and I are friends. In fact, I think I will be avoiding you for the foreseeable future.
Wow, I feel positively inspired.
John Updike, I don't think you and I are friends. In fact, I think I will be avoiding you for the foreseeable future.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 15, 2018
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 of being the town bicycles (which is exactly the kind of term the scared, compliant housewives of Eastwick would use for them), lusted after by married men, whispered about in polite circles, and uninvited to the society parties. They use their magic--which yes, is literal and real, not a metaphor--to get a leg up in a tennis match, or to play frightening pranks on the people who gossip about them, rather than following in the footsteps of their Salem and England predecessors by acting as midwives and abortionists.
The three witches--Alexandra the sculptor, Jane the musician, and Sookie the writer--don't give a fuck what the town thinks of them. They gained their powers by freeing themselves from the bonds of traditional marriage, a point which makes way more sense in 1965 than it does now, when most American marriages are approaching gender equality. And thus, powerful and freed, they pursue their art and pleasure ("hedonistic delights" their stuffy enemies might say) to the neglect of their personal reputations (who fucking cares anyway?), their entirely besotted boyfriends (which is part of the point in their joyful sleeping around), and their children.
Which brings us right around to the forceful shoving of a metaphor down the reader's throat. These women are terrible mothers! Not only are they total floozies who have disrespected the sacred nuclear family, but they suck at taking care of their kids, who appear only as peripheral characters (only one of the ten or so kids between the three witches is even named). Witches = divorcées = sluts = bad moms. DO YOU GET IT YET? DO YOU GET THE POINT JOHN UPDIKE IS MAKING? IT'S SOCIAL COMMENTARY, YOU GUYS.
If I sound annoyed, it's because I am. This book could've been so brilliant. Instead it was about a third too long, just because of the author's penchant for writing around in circles. And while the dialogue was beautifully natural and entertaining, the characters fully realized and individual... it was clear that this book about three unusual, anti-authoritarian, first wave feminist women was written by a man.
A man who is obsessed with the bodies of women. Boobs, specifically.
I don't mind gratuitous nudity in books (I dig A Song of Ice and Fire, you know). It wasn't that a weekly naked hot tub orgy was a regular occurrence in this book. It was the way the naked hot tub orgy was described. It was the mid-century literary equivalent of girl-on-girl porn filmed for the male gaze. I don't know how else to put my finger on it. But it annoyed me.
You know what else annoyed me? Daryl Van Horn, the witches' male counterpart. Despite not having any magic, I guess he could count as a warlock. Though the point of his character seemed to be "Look at all this crazy shit a man can get away with that would get a woman metaphorically burned at the metaphorical stake." The witches flock to him at first reluctantly, and then eagerly as his crazy eccentricity rears its head. He delights in their company because, as we come to learn, they are everything he wishes he could be... even though he has all the money, freedom, and societal power that will never be available to them.
But what bothers me about the relationship between Van Horn and the witches (their group relationship and his caring individual relationships with each of them) is how we're set up to believe these women are totally self-sufficient, with built-in bullshit detectors, who keep themselves aloof from caring about anything except their art and their coven. And yet they're totally taken in by Van Horn. It's clear to the reader as soon as he steps on the page that he's a fucking con artist. And yet the witches are having too much fun with their tennis and their orgies and running around his giant mansion of a house to notice that he is not at all what he says he is.
If these witches are supposed to be so smart, why do they fall all over themselves for Van Horn?
I will say one last thing in the author's favor. A great novel is about change. Things on the last page should not be the same as they were on the first page. This was JK Rowling's big failure, but it is not John Updike's. I won't spoil the ending for you, but it was gratifying and natural and managed to maintain the integrity of the witches' central premise without keeping them trapped in the cycle created through the plot.
I desperately wanted to love this book, and to an extent, I loved the main characters. But it failed to stick the landing. And I realized that when I found myself skimming Van Horn's last lengthy, pointless diatribe before he left the book forever.
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 of being the town bicycles (which is exactly the kind of term the scared, compliant housewives of Eastwick would use for them), lusted after by married men, whispered about in polite circles, and uninvited to the society parties. They use their magic--which yes, is literal and real, not a metaphor--to get a leg up in a tennis match, or to play frightening pranks on the people who gossip about them, rather than following in the footsteps of their Salem and England predecessors by acting as midwives and abortionists.
The three witches--Alexandra the sculptor, Jane the musician, and Sookie the writer--don't give a fuck what the town thinks of them. They gained their powers by freeing themselves from the bonds of traditional marriage, a point which makes way more sense in 1965 than it does now, when most American marriages are approaching gender equality. And thus, powerful and freed, they pursue their art and pleasure ("hedonistic delights" their stuffy enemies might say) to the neglect of their personal reputations (who fucking cares anyway?), their entirely besotted boyfriends (which is part of the point in their joyful sleeping around), and their children.
Which brings us right around to the forceful shoving of a metaphor down the reader's throat. These women are terrible mothers! Not only are they total floozies who have disrespected the sacred nuclear family, but they suck at taking care of their kids, who appear only as peripheral characters (only one of the ten or so kids between the three witches is even named). Witches = divorcées = sluts = bad moms. DO YOU GET IT YET? DO YOU GET THE POINT JOHN UPDIKE IS MAKING? IT'S SOCIAL COMMENTARY, YOU GUYS.
If I sound annoyed, it's because I am. This book could've been so brilliant. Instead it was about a third too long, just because of the author's penchant for writing around in circles. And while the dialogue was beautifully natural and entertaining, the characters fully realized and individual... it was clear that this book about three unusual, anti-authoritarian, first wave feminist women was written by a man.
A man who is obsessed with the bodies of women. Boobs, specifically.
I don't mind gratuitous nudity in books (I dig A Song of Ice and Fire, you know). It wasn't that a weekly naked hot tub orgy was a regular occurrence in this book. It was the way the naked hot tub orgy was described. It was the mid-century literary equivalent of girl-on-girl porn filmed for the male gaze. I don't know how else to put my finger on it. But it annoyed me.
You know what else annoyed me? Daryl Van Horn, the witches' male counterpart. Despite not having any magic, I guess he could count as a warlock. Though the point of his character seemed to be "Look at all this crazy shit a man can get away with that would get a woman metaphorically burned at the metaphorical stake." The witches flock to him at first reluctantly, and then eagerly as his crazy eccentricity rears its head. He delights in their company because, as we come to learn, they are everything he wishes he could be... even though he has all the money, freedom, and societal power that will never be available to them.
But what bothers me about the relationship between Van Horn and the witches (their group relationship and his caring individual relationships with each of them) is how we're set up to believe these women are totally self-sufficient, with built-in bullshit detectors, who keep themselves aloof from caring about anything except their art and their coven. And yet they're totally taken in by Van Horn. It's clear to the reader as soon as he steps on the page that he's a fucking con artist. And yet the witches are having too much fun with their tennis and their orgies and running around his giant mansion of a house to notice that he is not at all what he says he is.
If these witches are supposed to be so smart, why do they fall all over themselves for Van Horn?
I will say one last thing in the author's favor. A great novel is about change. Things on the last page should not be the same as they were on the first page. This was JK Rowling's big failure, but it is not John Updike's. I won't spoil the ending for you, but it was gratifying and natural and managed to maintain the integrity of the witches' central premise without keeping them trapped in the cycle created through the plot.
I desperately wanted to love this book, and to an extent, I loved the main characters. But it failed to stick the landing. And I realized that when I found myself skimming Van Horn's last lengthy, pointless diatribe before he left the book forever.
October 21, 2009
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 average of about 150 pages week. That's an average of 21 pages a day. That's an awful average. Wanna know what's even worse than that average? The fact that whole days went by without me even WANTING to pick this book up again when I first started it.
The characters were not really likable. I could not find anyone that I felt connected to, or at least even slightly cared about. Updike has this uncanny way of making them all ugly, even if they are supposedly attractive. Pointing out every flaw - though he went much easier on the woman. The poor men characters in this book never stood a chance. All are balding, bad breathed, hairy knuckled, sweating things. Gross!
His idea of what women want, what women talk about, and how women act around each other was completely off-base. And coarse. And he likened things about a womans body and attitude to things that didn't even make sense. To things that made me cringe and grimace. It was quite painful at times.
Imagine taking one of those eye-clops toys they sell for the kids now, that are like a microscope, and can project images onto the television screen. Updike uses the same format... placing all the knicks and warts and liver spots and hallitosis out there for the whole world to read.
At about the 2/3rds mark, I found myself finally engaged in the novel and reading through the pages much quicker, trying to find out just where Updike was going to leave these three witches and their wacky zany neighbor. 100 pages devoured yesterday. Amazing!
Will I be reading any other novels by Updike, after this slightly disappointing introduction to his work? Sadly, I may just pass. Am I happy to have read it? Eh. Jury is out on that one, at this time. Would I recommend it to someone? Well, I did give it 3 stars, after all. So, I suppose if someone told me they were looking for a book that involved horribly flawed witches and wasn't so much focused on the witchyness of those witches, then, ok, I could recommend this to them. But I would have to be certain that they weren't looking for anything great. Because then I would setting them up for a fall.
(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 average of about 150 pages week. That's an average of 21 pages a day. That's an awful average. Wanna know what's even worse than that average? The fact that whole days went by without me even WANTING to pick this book up again when I first started it.
The characters were not really likable. I could not find anyone that I felt connected to, or at least even slightly cared about. Updike has this uncanny way of making them all ugly, even if they are supposedly attractive. Pointing out every flaw - though he went much easier on the woman. The poor men characters in this book never stood a chance. All are balding, bad breathed, hairy knuckled, sweating things. Gross!
His idea of what women want, what women talk about, and how women act around each other was completely off-base. And coarse. And he likened things about a womans body and attitude to things that didn't even make sense. To things that made me cringe and grimace. It was quite painful at times.
Imagine taking one of those eye-clops toys they sell for the kids now, that are like a microscope, and can project images onto the television screen. Updike uses the same format... placing all the knicks and warts and liver spots and hallitosis out there for the whole world to read.
At about the 2/3rds mark, I found myself finally engaged in the novel and reading through the pages much quicker, trying to find out just where Updike was going to leave these three witches and their wacky zany neighbor. 100 pages devoured yesterday. Amazing!
Will I be reading any other novels by Updike, after this slightly disappointing introduction to his work? Sadly, I may just pass. Am I happy to have read it? Eh. Jury is out on that one, at this time. Would I recommend it to someone? Well, I did give it 3 stars, after all. So, I suppose if someone told me they were looking for a book that involved horribly flawed witches and wasn't so much focused on the witchyness of those witches, then, ok, I could recommend this to them. But I would have to be certain that they weren't looking for anything great. Because then I would setting them up for a fall.
May 25, 2017
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.
ugh.
June 14, 2021
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 book that makes you doubt a writer's sanity. You could lose faith in an author this way, or you could keep rummaging through their oeuvre searching for the Jekyll-Hyde, good-bad, failure-triumphs until a very tainted opinion coalesces. I thought editors were supposed to point out obvious, heinous literary crimes, no matter how frillily the writer dressed them up. Maybe, after a certain point of popularity, you can just get away with anything.
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 book that makes you doubt a writer's sanity. You could lose faith in an author this way, or you could keep rummaging through their oeuvre searching for the Jekyll-Hyde, good-bad, failure-triumphs until a very tainted opinion coalesces. I thought editors were supposed to point out obvious, heinous literary crimes, no matter how frillily the writer dressed them up. Maybe, after a certain point of popularity, you can just get away with anything.
September 21, 2016
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, Witches does enchant and is probably a necessary read for anyone interested in Updike's writing.
December 11, 2007
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 there. A wonderful, rich read.
February 2, 2025
“John Updike once described his 1984 novel, The Witches of Eastwick, as an attempt by him to ‘make things right with my, what shall we call them, feminist detractors,� who complained, he said, that he tended to portray women as ‘wives, sex objects and purely domestic creatures.’� � NY Times. They surely seemed like that in the Rabbit series.
In this novel, I think he was trying to portray the women as strong, independent women who don’t really need men, not even a bad boy like Darryl van Horne, the new boy in the small town of Eastwick. Updike is trying to understand and appreciate women in the new feminist era which has left his 1950s Rabbit world behind.
“� for little is more precious in an affair for a man than being welcomed into a house he has done nothing to support, or more momentous for the woman than this welcoming, this considered largess, her house is his, his on the strength of his cock alone, his cock and company, the smell and amusement and weight of him � � no buying you with mortgage payments, no blackmailing you with shared children, but welcomed, simply, into the walls of yourself, an admission dignified by freedom and equality.�
Updike is having fun with this novel, too, and it is a romp. He sets the scene in New England with a rich tradition of witchcraft. “Certainly the fact of witchcraft hung in the consciousness of Eastwick�. It had the uncertain outlines of something seen through a shower door and was viscid, slow to evaporate: for years after the events gropingly and even reluctantly related here, the rumor of witchcraft stained this corner of Rhode Island, so that a prickliness of embarrassment and unease entered the atmosphere with the most innocent mention of Eastwick.�
Jane, Sukie and Alexandra � “Nightclad and giggling, in the innocent days when they were freshly liberated from the wraps of housewifery, the witches used to sally out beneath the crescent moon to gather such herbs, where they nestled at the rare and delicate starlet junction of suitable soil and moisture and shade. The market for all their magic was drying up, so common and multiform had sorcery become; but if they were poor, van Horne was rich, and his wealth theirs to enjoy for their dark hours of holiday from their shabby sunlit days.�
Together they form a coven, and they become stronger in their powers when they unite. Alexandra seems to have the strongest powers. “It did not surprise Alexandra that for all her spite, Jane should be the weak sister when it came to casting the spell; for magic is fueled by love, not hate: hate wields scissors only and is impotent to weave the threads of sympathy where by the mind and spirit do move matter.�
So much for the setup. With Updike you get a real sense of the times, such as this snippet, “…the television aerials scraping Kojak and Pepsi commercials out of the sky.�
You get descriptive prose, such as, “The winter passed. In the darkroom of overnight blizzards, New England picture postcards were developed; the morning’s sunshine displayed them in color. The not-quite-straight sidewalks of Dock Street, shoveled in patches, manifested patterns of compressed bootprints, like dirty white cookies with treads. A jagged wilderness of greenish ice cakes swung in and out with the tides, pressing on the bearded, barnacled pilings that underlay the Bay Superette.�
And you get reflection. “We all dream, and we all stand aghast at the mouth of the caves of our deaths; and this is our way in. Into a netherworld. Before plumbing, in the old outhouses, in winter, the accreted shit of the family would mount up in a spiky, frozen stalagmite, and such phenomena help us to believe that there is more to life than the airbrushed ads at the front of magazines, the platonic forms of perfume bottles, and the nylon nightgowns and Rolls-Royce fenders. Perhaps in the passageways of our dreams we meet, more than we know: one white lamplit face, astonished by another.�
Note: The novel’s plot varies from the movie. I kept seeing Jack Nicholson as Darryl van Horne, hard to get that portrayal out of my head, although the women’s roles seemed muddled.
Although I enjoyed the movie very much, I didn’t want the book to end. But, as all things come to a close, end it did, with the action finished and not described in this review, but with these closing thoughts:
“What is of interest is what our minds retain, what our lives have given to the air. The witches are gone, vanished; we were just an interval in their lives, and they in ours. But as Sukie‘s blue green ghost continues to haunt the sunstruck pavement, and Jane’s black shape to flit passed the moon, so the rumors of the days when they were solid among us, gorgeous and doing evil, have flavored the name of the town in the mouths of others, and for those of us who live here have left something oblong and invisible and exciting we do not understand. We meet it turning the corner, where Hemlock meets Oak; it is there when we walk the beach in off-season and the Atlantic and its blackness mirrors the dense packed gray of the clouds: a scandal, life like smoke rising twisted into legend.�
How can you not love an author who can write like that?
5 stars.
In this novel, I think he was trying to portray the women as strong, independent women who don’t really need men, not even a bad boy like Darryl van Horne, the new boy in the small town of Eastwick. Updike is trying to understand and appreciate women in the new feminist era which has left his 1950s Rabbit world behind.
“� for little is more precious in an affair for a man than being welcomed into a house he has done nothing to support, or more momentous for the woman than this welcoming, this considered largess, her house is his, his on the strength of his cock alone, his cock and company, the smell and amusement and weight of him � � no buying you with mortgage payments, no blackmailing you with shared children, but welcomed, simply, into the walls of yourself, an admission dignified by freedom and equality.�
Updike is having fun with this novel, too, and it is a romp. He sets the scene in New England with a rich tradition of witchcraft. “Certainly the fact of witchcraft hung in the consciousness of Eastwick�. It had the uncertain outlines of something seen through a shower door and was viscid, slow to evaporate: for years after the events gropingly and even reluctantly related here, the rumor of witchcraft stained this corner of Rhode Island, so that a prickliness of embarrassment and unease entered the atmosphere with the most innocent mention of Eastwick.�
Jane, Sukie and Alexandra � “Nightclad and giggling, in the innocent days when they were freshly liberated from the wraps of housewifery, the witches used to sally out beneath the crescent moon to gather such herbs, where they nestled at the rare and delicate starlet junction of suitable soil and moisture and shade. The market for all their magic was drying up, so common and multiform had sorcery become; but if they were poor, van Horne was rich, and his wealth theirs to enjoy for their dark hours of holiday from their shabby sunlit days.�
Together they form a coven, and they become stronger in their powers when they unite. Alexandra seems to have the strongest powers. “It did not surprise Alexandra that for all her spite, Jane should be the weak sister when it came to casting the spell; for magic is fueled by love, not hate: hate wields scissors only and is impotent to weave the threads of sympathy where by the mind and spirit do move matter.�
So much for the setup. With Updike you get a real sense of the times, such as this snippet, “…the television aerials scraping Kojak and Pepsi commercials out of the sky.�
You get descriptive prose, such as, “The winter passed. In the darkroom of overnight blizzards, New England picture postcards were developed; the morning’s sunshine displayed them in color. The not-quite-straight sidewalks of Dock Street, shoveled in patches, manifested patterns of compressed bootprints, like dirty white cookies with treads. A jagged wilderness of greenish ice cakes swung in and out with the tides, pressing on the bearded, barnacled pilings that underlay the Bay Superette.�
And you get reflection. “We all dream, and we all stand aghast at the mouth of the caves of our deaths; and this is our way in. Into a netherworld. Before plumbing, in the old outhouses, in winter, the accreted shit of the family would mount up in a spiky, frozen stalagmite, and such phenomena help us to believe that there is more to life than the airbrushed ads at the front of magazines, the platonic forms of perfume bottles, and the nylon nightgowns and Rolls-Royce fenders. Perhaps in the passageways of our dreams we meet, more than we know: one white lamplit face, astonished by another.�
Note: The novel’s plot varies from the movie. I kept seeing Jack Nicholson as Darryl van Horne, hard to get that portrayal out of my head, although the women’s roles seemed muddled.
Although I enjoyed the movie very much, I didn’t want the book to end. But, as all things come to a close, end it did, with the action finished and not described in this review, but with these closing thoughts:
“What is of interest is what our minds retain, what our lives have given to the air. The witches are gone, vanished; we were just an interval in their lives, and they in ours. But as Sukie‘s blue green ghost continues to haunt the sunstruck pavement, and Jane’s black shape to flit passed the moon, so the rumors of the days when they were solid among us, gorgeous and doing evil, have flavored the name of the town in the mouths of others, and for those of us who live here have left something oblong and invisible and exciting we do not understand. We meet it turning the corner, where Hemlock meets Oak; it is there when we walk the beach in off-season and the Atlantic and its blackness mirrors the dense packed gray of the clouds: a scandal, life like smoke rising twisted into legend.�
How can you not love an author who can write like that?
5 stars.
December 29, 2014
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 (nevermind that the women ended up not caring about the actual children). Being proud of your body shouldn't just amount to the fact that you're fertile.
I love that this group of women have a strong bond, can survive without men, and are comfortable with their own bodies and sexuality. BUT this group of women also hated all other women and rained misery down upon them in the form of witchcraft as well as simply talking behind their backs and constantly judging them. That is not feminist. Furthermore, the whole plot of the book ended up revolving around a man. Updike tried and failed.
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 (nevermind that the women ended up not caring about the actual children). Being proud of your body shouldn't just amount to the fact that you're fertile.
I love that this group of women have a strong bond, can survive without men, and are comfortable with their own bodies and sexuality. BUT this group of women also hated all other women and rained misery down upon them in the form of witchcraft as well as simply talking behind their backs and constantly judging them. That is not feminist. Furthermore, the whole plot of the book ended up revolving around a man. Updike tried and failed.
January 2, 2016
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 themselves wielding magic and then had it sapped from them by something they may or may not have called with that power. It's certainly not without merit and a worthy read, but probably not a fun one for anyone who would cringe at Updike's out of date (it was set if not written in the 70s) views on women, race, culture, homosexuality, witchcraft, and married life in small town New England.
In fact, there a ton of ladies ranting about that here, let me clarify how that means you didn't get the satire he's using, folks.
One, he intentionally wrote characters who are bored, vague souls who are aimless and accidentally wind up empowered like the witches of old. That's right, he never meant for you to like any of them in a direct way.
Two, this is so he can play with the idea of witches from Salem era mythology, grabbing a few semi-modern notes from that 70s era concept of paganism and grounding it in the classical stories. They're supposed to be doing bad things so the town hates them like in those old stories.
Three, it's not pissing on feminism, witchcraft, or even bored housewives as much as that he's having fun with the idea of complacent modern women who feel stuck in life and don't know what to do with their own energy might do with an excess of power. He even has them doing some of the classical things witches were suppose to have done in those old tales, healing the damaged with sex, connecting with the elements, having familiars, and making spells for the needy before Daryl comes to town and sets off a big shift in both power structure and the focus for that power. The women become greedier mostly because he can't really nourish them the way he's supposed- and initially tries- to do, the jealousy over him adds to this as do the frustrations created by the lives these women lead.
Four, despite the flights of fancy, this really is meant to be set in the real world, and nothing ever really seems to be perfect in real life does it? When we lose direction we can become listless and loss our focus, when we take out passion and invest it in taking others apart we suffer and grow bitter, when we don't invest in people and go along with the crowd we lose a great deal of our own spirit. Others sap us, people can only stand so much venom and people use each other to replace what they do not already have. This was the sort of world the Vietnam era bedroom communities often gave off. The world, lost in war, taking death and the trivial feeling life can often have when we are not capable of investing becomes circuitous, cruel, and perhaps pointless. What good would such power do people who do not really want to live life so much as cease their boredom?
All that being said, I really do think I like the movie better, mostly because it found a way to be snarky and witty about the themes without descending into bleaker territory completely. It dragged with some of the final bits, which were replaced with a more direct ending in the film and also trimmed some of the extra characters that also pulled focus away from the central plot in the book. I liked quite a bit of Witches of Eastwick, but by the end you sort of wonder how the sequel really came to be as everything seemed pretty final.
In fact, there a ton of ladies ranting about that here, let me clarify how that means you didn't get the satire he's using, folks.
One, he intentionally wrote characters who are bored, vague souls who are aimless and accidentally wind up empowered like the witches of old. That's right, he never meant for you to like any of them in a direct way.
Two, this is so he can play with the idea of witches from Salem era mythology, grabbing a few semi-modern notes from that 70s era concept of paganism and grounding it in the classical stories. They're supposed to be doing bad things so the town hates them like in those old stories.
Three, it's not pissing on feminism, witchcraft, or even bored housewives as much as that he's having fun with the idea of complacent modern women who feel stuck in life and don't know what to do with their own energy might do with an excess of power. He even has them doing some of the classical things witches were suppose to have done in those old tales, healing the damaged with sex, connecting with the elements, having familiars, and making spells for the needy before Daryl comes to town and sets off a big shift in both power structure and the focus for that power. The women become greedier mostly because he can't really nourish them the way he's supposed- and initially tries- to do, the jealousy over him adds to this as do the frustrations created by the lives these women lead.
Four, despite the flights of fancy, this really is meant to be set in the real world, and nothing ever really seems to be perfect in real life does it? When we lose direction we can become listless and loss our focus, when we take out passion and invest it in taking others apart we suffer and grow bitter, when we don't invest in people and go along with the crowd we lose a great deal of our own spirit. Others sap us, people can only stand so much venom and people use each other to replace what they do not already have. This was the sort of world the Vietnam era bedroom communities often gave off. The world, lost in war, taking death and the trivial feeling life can often have when we are not capable of investing becomes circuitous, cruel, and perhaps pointless. What good would such power do people who do not really want to live life so much as cease their boredom?
All that being said, I really do think I like the movie better, mostly because it found a way to be snarky and witty about the themes without descending into bleaker territory completely. It dragged with some of the final bits, which were replaced with a more direct ending in the film and also trimmed some of the extra characters that also pulled focus away from the central plot in the book. I liked quite a bit of Witches of Eastwick, but by the end you sort of wonder how the sequel really came to be as everything seemed pretty final.
May 10, 2020
Goodread reviewers have pummelled this novel, but they are all wrong. This book is one of the great American post-war novels.
First, Updike is an amazing stylist, an American Proust. He writes long, voluptuous sentences that meander over slow paragraphs, like fingers moving down a naked body. His sentences are not something that everyone enjoys, but, not everyone enjoys fingers moving down bodies, either. Like Proust, Updike's style, though maddening to some, will endure with readers decades from now. He crafts melodious sentences that linger in my ears long after having read them.
The second aspect of Updike's writing that many readers have trouble with is the claim that this is a progressive, feminist novel. I know many disagree with me, but I find this a powerfully feminist novel. These witches are powerful women, women who have freed themselves from their need from male support and now are able to consume men at their leisure. Some Goodread reviewers have suggested that this means that the three witches are still essentially dependent on men, but that is like saying that ranchers are dependent on and subservient to their cows because, after running them, roping them, moving them and killing them, the ranchers eventually depend on the cows because they have to eat them to survive. Equating sexual desire with dependence is a mistake that many feminist reviewers have made, but is not really feminism at all, just a reincarnation of Puritanism. The female characters in this novel know what they want, take what they want and brush away anyone who gets in their way.
As Goodread reviewers have pointed out, none of the female characters are good. True, but irrelevant to whether or not this is a feminist novel. As the best characters in all novels are, the three protagonist in this novel are all complicated. They kill small animals to make their magic more potent. They murder a young girl. They enjoy giving a handy. They are not great mothers. All of those things are true, yet they are all irrelevant to whether or not this is a feminist novel.
This is a novel, not a parable. Readers searching for characters who are entirely good should visit a church, not a book shop, for it is only there you will find characters who are entirely two-dimensional.
Despite the negative characteristics of these three witches, all of these characters are empathic and admirable, and they are too craftully rendered by Updike to suggest that they are merely instruments of Updike’s social critique. Updike is not critiquing their sexual appetites nor their lacking much of a maternal nature. This is a feminist novel because these women feel like real people who know what they want and set out to get it, and the novel positions the reader to admire them, despite their flaws.
I know some readers hate this novel because of Updike’s style. Fine. But Updike is in love with these characters too much to suggest that he is portraying these women in a misogynistic fashion. If anything, the flattest, least empathetic character in the novel is the lead male, Darryl Van Horne, who comes off as uninteresting and flabbily constructed character, a puppet that the author utilizes to move the plot along without ever bothering to make relatable. This novel asks us to root for these three witches, it outlines their desires and watches them as they set out to achieve their goals. It is not a novel to be brushed aside as something from a more benighted age, but rather a novel that should be read again and again.
First, Updike is an amazing stylist, an American Proust. He writes long, voluptuous sentences that meander over slow paragraphs, like fingers moving down a naked body. His sentences are not something that everyone enjoys, but, not everyone enjoys fingers moving down bodies, either. Like Proust, Updike's style, though maddening to some, will endure with readers decades from now. He crafts melodious sentences that linger in my ears long after having read them.
The second aspect of Updike's writing that many readers have trouble with is the claim that this is a progressive, feminist novel. I know many disagree with me, but I find this a powerfully feminist novel. These witches are powerful women, women who have freed themselves from their need from male support and now are able to consume men at their leisure. Some Goodread reviewers have suggested that this means that the three witches are still essentially dependent on men, but that is like saying that ranchers are dependent on and subservient to their cows because, after running them, roping them, moving them and killing them, the ranchers eventually depend on the cows because they have to eat them to survive. Equating sexual desire with dependence is a mistake that many feminist reviewers have made, but is not really feminism at all, just a reincarnation of Puritanism. The female characters in this novel know what they want, take what they want and brush away anyone who gets in their way.
As Goodread reviewers have pointed out, none of the female characters are good. True, but irrelevant to whether or not this is a feminist novel. As the best characters in all novels are, the three protagonist in this novel are all complicated. They kill small animals to make their magic more potent. They murder a young girl. They enjoy giving a handy. They are not great mothers. All of those things are true, yet they are all irrelevant to whether or not this is a feminist novel.
This is a novel, not a parable. Readers searching for characters who are entirely good should visit a church, not a book shop, for it is only there you will find characters who are entirely two-dimensional.
Despite the negative characteristics of these three witches, all of these characters are empathic and admirable, and they are too craftully rendered by Updike to suggest that they are merely instruments of Updike’s social critique. Updike is not critiquing their sexual appetites nor their lacking much of a maternal nature. This is a feminist novel because these women feel like real people who know what they want and set out to get it, and the novel positions the reader to admire them, despite their flaws.
I know some readers hate this novel because of Updike’s style. Fine. But Updike is in love with these characters too much to suggest that he is portraying these women in a misogynistic fashion. If anything, the flattest, least empathetic character in the novel is the lead male, Darryl Van Horne, who comes off as uninteresting and flabbily constructed character, a puppet that the author utilizes to move the plot along without ever bothering to make relatable. This novel asks us to root for these three witches, it outlines their desires and watches them as they set out to achieve their goals. It is not a novel to be brushed aside as something from a more benighted age, but rather a novel that should be read again and again.
March 29, 2009
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, but not much. This novel is to its movie what by Gregory Maguire is to its musical. Deep and Dark vs. Warm and Fuzzy.
That being said, it was still a good book. Something darker that takes all our faults (physical or otherwise) and displays them right out in the light. A view from the other side of the fence, you know, the side where the people we all judge live. Here are these people, and they're doing these "bad" things, and look, here are the reasons they do them. Not really good reasons, but still reasons. And then, how they feel afterwards. The way Updike writes (or wrote...we lost a great writer this year) you can put yourself in their shoes...I don't think I have ever heard -or will ever hear again- a better justification for a woman who sleeps with married men. Still not totally justified, but with this explanation, you have to say, "Yeah, I can see that." Reminds me a little of ...people with powers are still people after all, with all the character flaws, but maybe natural reactions are harder to suppress, like picking up a Faberge egg with super strength. Super powers don't come with super control. Wishing the barking dog across the street would just shut up and die doesn't end with a dead dog, but if it did...would you be able to control yourself at two in the morning during a bout of insomnia and menstrual cramps?
Updike's descriptives were really potent and he seemed to have a pretty good idea of how the female brain operates even if he didn't present us in the best light. So, over all a pretty good read, even though the ending of the book really makes the feminist in me go, "What!?!" But my feminist side is pretty small so I'll have to read to see what Mr. Updike had in mind for us (I mean the characters...see what I mean about putting yourself in their shoes?) 26 years later.
Favorite quote, "It was nice to have yourself known by a man; it was getting to be known that was embarrassing: all that self-conscious verbalization over too many drinks, and then the bodies revealed with the hidden marks and sags like disappointing presents at Christmastime. But how much of love, when you thought about it, was not of the other but of yourself naked in his eyes: of that rush, that little flight, of shedding your clothes, and being you at last."
That being said, it was still a good book. Something darker that takes all our faults (physical or otherwise) and displays them right out in the light. A view from the other side of the fence, you know, the side where the people we all judge live. Here are these people, and they're doing these "bad" things, and look, here are the reasons they do them. Not really good reasons, but still reasons. And then, how they feel afterwards. The way Updike writes (or wrote...we lost a great writer this year) you can put yourself in their shoes...I don't think I have ever heard -or will ever hear again- a better justification for a woman who sleeps with married men. Still not totally justified, but with this explanation, you have to say, "Yeah, I can see that." Reminds me a little of ...people with powers are still people after all, with all the character flaws, but maybe natural reactions are harder to suppress, like picking up a Faberge egg with super strength. Super powers don't come with super control. Wishing the barking dog across the street would just shut up and die doesn't end with a dead dog, but if it did...would you be able to control yourself at two in the morning during a bout of insomnia and menstrual cramps?
Updike's descriptives were really potent and he seemed to have a pretty good idea of how the female brain operates even if he didn't present us in the best light. So, over all a pretty good read, even though the ending of the book really makes the feminist in me go, "What!?!" But my feminist side is pretty small so I'll have to read to see what Mr. Updike had in mind for us (I mean the characters...see what I mean about putting yourself in their shoes?) 26 years later.
Favorite quote, "It was nice to have yourself known by a man; it was getting to be known that was embarrassing: all that self-conscious verbalization over too many drinks, and then the bodies revealed with the hidden marks and sags like disappointing presents at Christmastime. But how much of love, when you thought about it, was not of the other but of yourself naked in his eyes: of that rush, that little flight, of shedding your clothes, and being you at last."
March 18, 2012
Ugh. Initially, I kept reading this book because I expected something interesting to happen. Finally, about 170 pages into the book, something did, and then for some reason, I kept on reading, partly because I'm stubborn and partly because I was compelled the way people are compelled to gaze at the scene of car accidents as they drive by.
Overall, this book is a disappointment. The three witch characters are unlikeable and even deplorable. In once scene, one of the women kills a squirrel for no real reason at all, and that was the point at which I wanted to throw down the book in disgust. I don't have much of a stomach for cruelty to animals (and there are two more scenes in which non-human critters are killed by the women) even in fiction. Even more deplorable is the way in which they seek to destroy other women in the community of Eastwick, either out of jealousy, revenge, or for amusement.
I've never read any Updike before and found I needed to get used to his writing style. He writes long descriptive passages, really setting the scene, but on more crucial points is almost matter-of-fact. A few times I had to do a double take, like "Did I read that right? Did the tennis ball just turn into a toad?" The lackadaisical treatment (with the exception of the one major spell casting scene in the book) of the women's magic(k) made me think that Updike made them witches only for the sake of gimmickry. Or was he only capable of depicting women as powerful when they have supernatural powers?
It's ironic that the women realize their powers as their husbands leave them, but that they use their witchcraft to negatively affect rival women. The source of the rivalry? Men! Really they're a bunch of small town women who happen to fall "under the spell" of a strange man who, in my opinion, was an asshole.
Something that annoyed me: Updike refers to the women--all in their thirties--as being "middle-aged". Really? Maybe it was just the time in which the book was written, but really? Something else that annoyed me: The three women's speech is constantly peppered with so many feminine endearments (honey, baby, sweetie, my dear, etc.) that it almost drove me nuts, made them sound like empty-headed gossip hounds or stereotypical Southern belles, and made me wonder who Updike was eavesdropping on when he heard women talk like that. These complaints are trifles, but they added to the overall ineffectiveness of the book and Updike's perceived ability to write women.
The blurbs on the book cover and inside jacket describe this as a "hilarious" novel. Far from it as far as I'm concerned.
I've heard this book is a departure from the rest of Updike's writing. Everybody makes mistakes. I'm not such a harsh and unforgiving reader to say that I'll never read another novel by Updike.
Overall, this book is a disappointment. The three witch characters are unlikeable and even deplorable. In once scene, one of the women kills a squirrel for no real reason at all, and that was the point at which I wanted to throw down the book in disgust. I don't have much of a stomach for cruelty to animals (and there are two more scenes in which non-human critters are killed by the women) even in fiction. Even more deplorable is the way in which they seek to destroy other women in the community of Eastwick, either out of jealousy, revenge, or for amusement.
I've never read any Updike before and found I needed to get used to his writing style. He writes long descriptive passages, really setting the scene, but on more crucial points is almost matter-of-fact. A few times I had to do a double take, like "Did I read that right? Did the tennis ball just turn into a toad?" The lackadaisical treatment (with the exception of the one major spell casting scene in the book) of the women's magic(k) made me think that Updike made them witches only for the sake of gimmickry. Or was he only capable of depicting women as powerful when they have supernatural powers?
It's ironic that the women realize their powers as their husbands leave them, but that they use their witchcraft to negatively affect rival women. The source of the rivalry? Men! Really they're a bunch of small town women who happen to fall "under the spell" of a strange man who, in my opinion, was an asshole.
Something that annoyed me: Updike refers to the women--all in their thirties--as being "middle-aged". Really? Maybe it was just the time in which the book was written, but really? Something else that annoyed me: The three women's speech is constantly peppered with so many feminine endearments (honey, baby, sweetie, my dear, etc.) that it almost drove me nuts, made them sound like empty-headed gossip hounds or stereotypical Southern belles, and made me wonder who Updike was eavesdropping on when he heard women talk like that. These complaints are trifles, but they added to the overall ineffectiveness of the book and Updike's perceived ability to write women.
The blurbs on the book cover and inside jacket describe this as a "hilarious" novel. Far from it as far as I'm concerned.
I've heard this book is a departure from the rest of Updike's writing. Everybody makes mistakes. I'm not such a harsh and unforgiving reader to say that I'll never read another novel by Updike.
December 13, 2017
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.
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.
October 10, 2023
� Tutte le donne, sotto sotto, in qualche modo, sono streghe.
� "La magia è alimentata dall'amore non dall'odio"
� "La sua disgrazia era la capacità di raziocinio.
A sette anni aveva smesso di credere in Dio, a dieci nel patriottismo, nell'arte a quattordici anni, quando aveva capito che non sarebbe mai stato Beethoven, Picasso, Shakespeare"
� "Una donna può battere un uomo in sofferenza quando vuole."
� "Devi immaginare la tua vita" confidò Alexandra all'amica più giovane "e poi succede"
� "E' interessante invece ciò che resta impresso nei nostri pensieri, ciò che la nostra vita lascia nell'aria."
� "La noia in una moglie è parte del contratto sociale, ma la noia in una amante mina un uomo alla base."
� "Schiacciò un tasto e il soffitto ondulato tornò a coprire la sezione di cielo notturno. Scelse i dischi, prima Joplin, che urlava e strideva fino a ridursi rauca in “Piece of my heart� e “Get it while you can� e “Summertime � e “Down on me�, la personificazione vocale della gioiosa e spavalda disperazione femminile, e poi Tiny Tim, che si aggirava in punta di piedi fra i tulipani con elettrizzanti gorgheggi androgini. Quando la Joplin gracchiò “Summertime� con quel tempo spezzato, ricordando le parole in spasmi veementi come se ogni volta si staccasse dalle corde in una specie di incontro di pugilato interiore, avvolte in un alone di droga, Sukie e Alexandra ondeggiarono abbracciate senza muovere i piedi"
Voto: 3&mezzo/5
� "La magia è alimentata dall'amore non dall'odio"
� "La sua disgrazia era la capacità di raziocinio.
A sette anni aveva smesso di credere in Dio, a dieci nel patriottismo, nell'arte a quattordici anni, quando aveva capito che non sarebbe mai stato Beethoven, Picasso, Shakespeare"
� "Una donna può battere un uomo in sofferenza quando vuole."
� "Devi immaginare la tua vita" confidò Alexandra all'amica più giovane "e poi succede"
� "E' interessante invece ciò che resta impresso nei nostri pensieri, ciò che la nostra vita lascia nell'aria."
� "La noia in una moglie è parte del contratto sociale, ma la noia in una amante mina un uomo alla base."
� "Schiacciò un tasto e il soffitto ondulato tornò a coprire la sezione di cielo notturno. Scelse i dischi, prima Joplin, che urlava e strideva fino a ridursi rauca in “Piece of my heart� e “Get it while you can� e “Summertime � e “Down on me�, la personificazione vocale della gioiosa e spavalda disperazione femminile, e poi Tiny Tim, che si aggirava in punta di piedi fra i tulipani con elettrizzanti gorgheggi androgini. Quando la Joplin gracchiò “Summertime� con quel tempo spezzato, ricordando le parole in spasmi veementi come se ogni volta si staccasse dalle corde in una specie di incontro di pugilato interiore, avvolte in un alone di droga, Sukie e Alexandra ondeggiarono abbracciate senza muovere i piedi"
Voto: 3&mezzo/5
October 1, 2024
Взагалі мимо.
Таке враження, наче писав цю книгу ображений на все жіноцтво дядько, якому в голову влупив тестостерон.
Я очікувала містичну історію про диявола і відьом, а отримала сварливих незамужніх недотраханих тіток (в розумінні автора) з зайвими сосками, які якимось дивом всю книгу стелилися під незрозумілого дядьку.
Три зірочки за півтори розумні думки.
Таке враження, наче писав цю книгу ображений на все жіноцтво дядько, якому в голову влупив тестостерон.
Я очікувала містичну історію про диявола і відьом, а отримала сварливих незамужніх недотраханих тіток (в розумінні автора) з зайвими сосками, які якимось дивом всю книгу стелилися під незрозумілого дядьку.
Три зірочки за півтори розумні думки.
May 27, 2013
I have no idea why I'm rating this 2 stars, to be honest. I did NOT think Witches was ok. I thought it warped, fucked up story of three supposedly powerful women. Supposedly powerful, because they're witches. They're witches because they were left or they left their husbands. What they do with the power is spend the entire freaking book trying to catch another man. They aren't even discerning, anyone will do. And mostly they go with men who are already married, usually to women who're so bad they shouldn't exist. Sometimes that even gets taken care of by these nice witches. They discard men like they do pants, yet get pissy when it's the men doing the discarding.
Their object of fascination is an idiot by the name of Darryl Van Horne, a man of big money and big ideas, but really doesn't have anything interesting to say. My opinion, that, having read through every single one of his monologues, and being bored out of my mind. Not that the witches would agree. The ground he walks on, they worship. This is so because his big money and big ideas are so revolutionary. Oh, how did I forget his massive cock? That's what they really worship. When he gets married to a simple, lovely girl, they curse her with some voodoo doll and she . Their justification out of their guilt is that she didn't mind, because Darryl was . I can't even.
If this was a commentary on... something, it didn't work. It's a crappy story, boring to boot, with flat female characters who can't seem to move a step forward without male validation. Not only are they vapid, supercilious bitches who have not a single thought beyond themselves, they're terrible mothers too. And murderers. And they have happy endings. There were a few ok passages, but it was mostly bunk about some uselesswomen cardboard cutouts. I hate this book so much. The two stars lasted for the length of a short review.
Their object of fascination is an idiot by the name of Darryl Van Horne, a man of big money and big ideas, but really doesn't have anything interesting to say. My opinion, that, having read through every single one of his monologues, and being bored out of my mind. Not that the witches would agree. The ground he walks on, they worship. This is so because his big money and big ideas are so revolutionary. Oh, how did I forget his massive cock? That's what they really worship. When he gets married to a simple, lovely girl, they curse her with some voodoo doll and she . Their justification out of their guilt is that she didn't mind, because Darryl was . I can't even.
If this was a commentary on... something, it didn't work. It's a crappy story, boring to boot, with flat female characters who can't seem to move a step forward without male validation. Not only are they vapid, supercilious bitches who have not a single thought beyond themselves, they're terrible mothers too. And murderers. And they have happy endings. There were a few ok passages, but it was mostly bunk about some useless
March 7, 2016
Είχα υψηλότερες προσδοκίες από αυτό το βιβλίο! Δεν έχει κάτι ιδιαίτερο, ούτε κάτι σκοτεινό, ούτε ιδιαίτερη μαγεία. Ένα πολύ χλιαρό βιβλίο.
February 22, 2008
I really enjoyed the writing in this book, but as a whole it left me feeling kind of unsettled and ambiguous. I think what ultimately bothered me was the way that the witches, who had been hurt by men, seemed to spend all their time using magic against other women. That was probably the point, but it's sort of one of those things that's been pointed out so often that I've ceased to find it very compelling or clever. I'd be interested in other peoples' thoughts on this book, though.
April 20, 2018
All the amazing Updike prose in the world couldn't make up for this gross book full of wretched characters.
September 27, 2018
In brief: I've never wanted to chuck a book out the window so much as this one. (This text oozes misogyny.)
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