One of the signature novels of the American 1960s, Couples is a book that, when it debuted, scandalized the public with prose pictures of the way people live, and that today provides an engrossing epitaph to the short, happy life of the “post-Pill paradise.” It chronicles the interactions of ten young married couples in a seaside New England community who make a cult of sex and of themselves. The group of acquaintances form a magical circle, complete with ritualistic games, religious substitutions, a priest (Freddy Thorne), and a scapegoat (Piet Hanema). As with most American utopias, this one’s existence is brief and unsustainable, but the “imaginative quest” that inspires its creation is eternal.
Couples: A Novel
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Review
“Couples [is] John Updike’s tour de force of extramarital wanderlust.”—The New York Times Book Review
“Trapped in their cozy catacombs, the couples have made sex by turns their toy, their glue, their trauma, their therapy, their hope, their frustration, their revenge, their narcotic, their main line of communication and their sole and pitiable shield against the awareness of death.”—Time
“Ingenious . . . If this is a dirty book, I don’t see how sex can be written about at all.”—Wilfrid Sheed, The New York Times Book Review
“Trapped in their cozy catacombs, the couples have made sex by turns their toy, their glue, their trauma, their therapy, their hope, their frustration, their revenge, their narcotic, their main line of communication and their sole and pitiable shield against the awareness of death.”—Time
“Ingenious . . . If this is a dirty book, I don’t see how sex can be written about at all.”—Wilfrid Sheed, The New York Times Book Review
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12 1.5-hour cassettes
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More About the Author
John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 lived in Massachusetts. He was the father of four children and the author of more than fifty books, including collections of short stories, poems, essays, and criticism. His novels won the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal. A previous collection of essays, Hugging the Shore, received the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. John Updike died on January 27, 2009, at the age of 76.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 31 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Set in fictional Tarbox, MA in the early 1960's, this book of 1968 was certainly a risqu' and revealing look at marriage in a small suburban community at a time of increasing sexual awareness and openness. Looking back, the sexual content is actually rather mild, but, more importantly, it seems that the type of communities and lifestyles that Updike describe have been swallowed up by vast, numbing suburbs, where traffic is terrible, wives work, and neighbors are strangers.
Yet, the book is a keen look at the dissatisfactions of marriage. Most of the couples knew or suspected that unfaithfulness was occurring among themselves, but they seemed to understand, if only subconsciously, that infidelity was or could be an outlet for the limitations of a spouse. The central character is home remodeler Piet Hanema, married to the sublime, but unapproachable, Angela, who seems to be happiest when in the arms of his latest lover. Updike's entry into this world is at the point when the Whitman's move in: he a professor and Elizabeth, or Foxy, a tall, winsome beauty who is also pregnant. Their old home on the coast requires extensive renovation providing the opportunity for Piet and Foxy to start a complicated relationship that that has community-wide consequences.
The book is a challenging read containing Updike's typical complex descriptions of various scenes, etc. And the interactions of the various couples, usually at some sort of party, while revealing and sometimes insightful, do get tedious. The author hardly advocates this sort of group infidelity. In fact, there is a pervading sense of sadness about the book as many of the couples go their own way, their problems resolved or not. It is a simplification to label this book as one primarily about "wife swapping." For one, that is wrong, and secondly it is about people trying to find some happiness or connectedness in their lives.
Yet, the book is a keen look at the dissatisfactions of marriage. Most of the couples knew or suspected that unfaithfulness was occurring among themselves, but they seemed to understand, if only subconsciously, that infidelity was or could be an outlet for the limitations of a spouse. The central character is home remodeler Piet Hanema, married to the sublime, but unapproachable, Angela, who seems to be happiest when in the arms of his latest lover. Updike's entry into this world is at the point when the Whitman's move in: he a professor and Elizabeth, or Foxy, a tall, winsome beauty who is also pregnant. Their old home on the coast requires extensive renovation providing the opportunity for Piet and Foxy to start a complicated relationship that that has community-wide consequences.
The book is a challenging read containing Updike's typical complex descriptions of various scenes, etc. And the interactions of the various couples, usually at some sort of party, while revealing and sometimes insightful, do get tedious. The author hardly advocates this sort of group infidelity. In fact, there is a pervading sense of sadness about the book as many of the couples go their own way, their problems resolved or not. It is a simplification to label this book as one primarily about "wife swapping." For one, that is wrong, and secondly it is about people trying to find some happiness or connectedness in their lives.
35 of 39 people found the following review helpful
By Andrew
Format:Paperback
Updike's portrait of the upper middle class in a sleepy Boston suburb in 1963 when people actually had more time than they knew what to do with seems almost as distant and foreign to our overworked present as Fitzgerald's Jazz Age. Set on the eve of the sexual revolution, the novel explores a circle of couples who nearly devour each other out of jealousy, lust and boredom. Yet, the book is not without its tender sides, as Updike manages some hard-won sympathy for his protagonist Piet Hanema, the philandering grown boy of a man who does very bad things for very sad reasons. Richly-detailed with references of the time, COUPLES is a vivid snapshot of America, or at least one slice of it, in 1963.
31 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Having read many of Updike's books (he's my fav. author), I rate Couples in the middle. The book is full of subtle symbolism and not-so-subtle symbolism, and has the Updike trademark of colorful imagery. It is a fair treatment of the complexities of infidelity.
However, I found reading it a bit of a chore. If you want to read Updike, this one should not be your first. I'd recommend the second Rabbit book, Rabbit Redux.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
couples-a novel
kinda thick to get into-but the subject matter is very intrigueing-the sex parts are done with poetic taste,very sensual. I think Updike has been there before. Read more
Published 1 month ago by john craft
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sixties Somethings
The early nineteen sixties beckoned on a decade of change. Not only did the world shake off most of the remnants of its most recent global war, not only did Europe's defeated... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Philip Spires
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great book but poor quality digital edition
This is a great book by Updike, delving into the emotions and personalities of a group of married couples in JFK era New England. Read more
Published 7 months ago by dressmaven
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not true greatness, but some kind of grace
John Updike's "Couples" is not his best novel, but it's not his worst, either. This is, in fact, a very good book about marriage and infidelity, set in the 1960s as the sexual... Read more
Published 11 months ago by maelje
4.0 out of 5 stars
A love story like no other...
I've read this novel maybe half a dozen times over the years. the story follows the marriages and affairs of several couples through a few turbulent years of the 1960's. Read more
Published 12 months ago by R. Corey
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliance of writing with little feeling for the characters
Perhaps I am just too old to read a book of this type. This is one of those books I missed many years ago. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Shalom Freedman
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Book With No Heroes
I also felt sad for the people when I finished the book. Is there any character to look up to? No. Did any of the characters grow to become better people? No. Read more
Published on January 12, 2011 by Michael Ford
4.0 out of 5 stars
Welcome to the Age of The Pill
"Couples" is an erudite -- if not, at times, overly rigorous -- analysis of marriage; and an attempt to explain how and why our commitments, which here also includes professional... Read more
Published on July 25, 2010 by Mary Sutton
1.0 out of 5 stars
Disappointed at this forty-year-old novel
I grew up in the 70's and thought this book would shed some light on what was really happening in the 1970s. If this book answers that question, it must have been a boring decade. Read more
Published on March 25, 2010 by C. Courbois
5.0 out of 5 stars
Couples is Suburbia with its Secrets laid bare
This is a prototypical Updike novel, in my opinion. Here he tackles the convoluted longings and messy interpersonal relationships between Foxy and her contractor Piet. Read more
Published on March 12, 2010 by Scott FS
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