A Month of Sundays: A Novel [Paperback]

John Updike (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 27, 1996

In this antic riff on Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, the Reverend Tom Marshfield, a latter-day Arthur Dimmesdale, is sent west from his Midwestern parish in sexual disgrace. At a desert retreat dedicated to rest, recreation, and spiritual renewal, this fortyish serial fornicator is required to keep a journal whose thirty-one weekly entries constitute the book you now hold in your hand. In his wonderfully overwrought style he lays bare his soul and his past—his marriage to the daughter of his ethics professor, his affair with his organist, his antipathetic conversations with his senile father and his bisexual curate, his golf scores, his poker hands, his Biblical exegeses, and his smoldering desire for the directress of the retreat, the impregnable Ms. Prynne. A testament for our times.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“John Updike may be America’s finest novelist and [A Month of Sundays] is quintessential Updike.”—The Washington Post
 
“Updike is playful, witty, ironic, ever-fresh, ever-provocative, and ever so ever erotic. . . . A Month of Sundays is both poignant and very funny. . . . One of America’s most original, most subtle, and most engaging writers.”—The Boston Globe
 
“The funniest book that anyone is likely to read in, well, a month of Sundays . . . an excellent novel . . . Updike is dazzling in his wordplay.”—The Cleveland Press

From the Publisher

5 1.5-hour cassettes --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks (August 27, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449912205
• ISBN-13: 978-0449912201
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.8 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #253,874 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hilarious celebration of pagan flesh and baffled spirit, September 9, 2005

By 

Steven Reynolds (Sydney, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Month of Sundays: A Novel (Paperback)

When the Reverend Thomas Marshall is busted for philandering with more than one of his buxom parishoners, he's dispatched by his bishop to a desert sanitorium for forty days of reflection, recuperation and golf. His carer, Ms Prynne, suggests he write as a form of therapy and this novel consists of Marshall's morning writing exercises and four sermons which he writes on Sundays. He recounts his recent past, the infidelities which led him here, reflecting on the joys of the flesh and the agonies of the spirit. In so doing, he also embarks on a cunning seduction of Ms Prynne... This is a wonderfully clever comic novel. It's rich with layers of symbolism and Biblical references - the Omega-shaped sanitorium, the forty days and nights in the desert - and bubbles along with puns, comic typographical errors, plus arch footnotes and endless wisecracks. It's beautifully plotted, impeccably structured, and like most of Updike's work, it's laugh-out-loud funny but utterly serious in its intent. It's an exploration of the nature and challenges of religious faith in contemporary America. The "sermons" are spectacular examples of the way we can reason the Bible into meaning anything - we can even turn adultery into the purpose of marriage and the key to fulfilling one's human destiny. Updike's control of language is astonishing - some reviewers find it confounding but they lack the patience to read this book slowly, to savour it like a seduction, to enjoy it as it was meant to be enjoyed. When you look back, you realize how meticulously crafted it's all been, and you're dazzled not only by that craftsmanship but also by how lightly it wears the weight. Updike's touch is deft, subtle and most of all incredibly funny.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Uncomfortablely Honest Look @ Sexuality and Religion, March 17, 2001

By 

Tron Honto - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Month of Sundays: A Novel (Paperback)

I found this book absolutely amazing. Though the Rev. Tom Marshfield is utterly despisable, he is also completely endearing. The prose is masterfully written. I only found it difficult during the first 3 pages. Updikes knowledge of theology impressed me, as well as his indepth treatment of the subject. Updikes juxtapositioning of sex (seen usually as profane) and theology gives this novel its unique edge. Highly recommended reading for anyone who has dared to ask the hard questions of religion and to search them out, and has suffered morally and spiritually as a result.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Decent Book from a Much Better Writer..., September 25, 2006

By 

C. Mendoza-tolentino "CMT" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Month of Sundays: A Novel (Paperback)

For those of you who have come to admire Updike's work, especially from the Rabbit Series, this novel will come as a disappointment. The story of Reverend Tom Marshfield whose sexual escapades with his parishioners causes many problems and eventully lands him in a place to be rehabilitated so that he can return to his church revitalized and purged of his wanton desires leaves much to be desired.

I had many problems getting into the novel - Updike seems to preoccupied with trying to establish Tom as a very astute and observant character with many insights into religion and life. Like with many novels that try to create unique and interesting perspectives, I found the text a little dull with nothing to entertain. If I wanted a diatribe on different subjects, I would buy a collection of essays. I found that Updike fails to have us really care or empathize with Tom's perspective (something Coetzee does marvelously in a similar novel Elizabeth Costello) so any rant he goes on comes off as unwanted. The middle of the text is where things pick up, when we finally find out what series of events leads to Tom being in the position he is in. For awhile, I couldn't put the book down as I raced through scenes of Tom coming to grips with his desires and needs, only to find the end of the novel return to the plodding pace that made the beginning so dull.

Stylistically , Updike is a writing master, as his prose is clear and succinct. It's a pleasure to read the way he constructs sentences. It's a shame that it's wasted on this somewhat problematic story.