41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Updike gives witchery a whirl., March 5, 2002
John Updike astutely recognizes the modern American suburb, with its hypocritical social mores and superstitions, as a rich literary setting. Into this milieu he introduces the fantastical and invents a tale of what life would be like for three divorced and bored housewives, who happen to be witches, living in such a place -- the fictitious Eastwick, Rhode Island -- in the late 1960's. It's like Updike is channeling Nathaniel Hawthorne through "Rabbit Redux."
The women are Alexandra Spofford, a sculptress, Jane Smart, a cellist, and Sukie Rougemont, the local gossip columnist. They drink a lot, neglect their kids, have sex with married men, and cast spells to torment their enemies, who are usually their lovers' wives; they have the traditional witchlike manners of being vindictive, temperamental, and spiteful. They've never desired a man in common until they meet a vaguely devilish fellow named Darryl Van Horne who has bought an old mansion on the outskirts of town. Van Horne is quite mysterious: He's a Manhattanite, a pianist, a collector of tacky nouveau art, and a renegade scientist, trying to discover impossibly efficient methods of generating electricity. He takes an interest in Alexandra's crude little sculptures, accompanies Jane in some sonatas, and encourages Sukie to write novels. He invites them to play tennis (where their magic lends itself to some creative cheating) and partake of the orgiastic pleasures of his hot tub.
The witches' auras induce strange and tragic effects on the lives of their lovers. Ed Parsley, the Unitarian minister, runs off to join the anti-war movement, leaving his churlish wife Brenda to take over the pulpit. Clyde Gabriel, the editor of Sukie's newspaper, is stuck with a gabby wife who gets her satisfaction from finding fault with everything. But it's the Gabriels' adult daughter Jenny that serves to drive a wedge between the witches and Van Horne. When Jenny shows up in town from Chicago, Sukie takes pity on the seemingly pathetic girl and invites her to join the "coven" at Van Horne's mansion. Jenny attracts Van Horne's amorous attentions, but his intentions, it turns out, confound even the witches' intuition.
Popular culture has interpreted the witch mystique as a form of feminine self-empowerment -- women willing themselves to be able to act in retribution or defense against men's hurtful actions -- so it makes sense that the witches in the novel imply that witchcraft is an untapped power all women have, particularly those who have been hurt by or are unhappy with the men in their lives. And it makes sense for Updike to have set the novel in the era of the Women's Movement of the 1960's, where witchcraft would have shed a new, different light on liberation. Are the witches of Eastwick liberated? Probably so, but it's too bad they're so miserable nonetheless.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Creative use of "witch-has-sex-with-devil" stereotype., March 7, 2007
I quite like the film and thought the book would be similar. The book is in fact much better than the film. I love Updike's modernisation of historical stereotypes of witches and witchcraft - maleficium, familiars, witches' marks, the devil. I love its historical period that is so obvious, yes not cringeworthy as some other books set in recent history can be. While the film is set in the 1980's (check out those perms) the book seems to be set in the late 60's - early 70's with references to Vietnam and Pop Art.
Updike's powers of description and similie are really gorgeous, I can visualise so well with this book I feel like I'm there. I wonder if it is particularly appealing and interesting to me because he describes nature so well? The sudden little magical occurances in the story are also unexpected and then pleasantly surreal. In addition, the witches' powers are not the usual stuff that you now expect from TV or film like Charmed or The Craft. I was interested to see how Updike handled female characters, him being a man and all, and they actually seem quite convincing to me. I don't think think the story is misogynist.
In this age of do-good modern witchcraft it is initially confrontational to read a book about witches where ethics is not a high priority in magic, yet it is also refreshing in a way. "The Witches of Eastwick" reminds me of the spell books by Valerie Worth in its general amorality and, I think, also of her particular, unusual aesthetic. I found that I couldn't wait to get back to it whenever I had to put the book down for other pressing duties. Also, while some fiction drives me mad with its implausibility, in this case it doesn't, and that is possibly because Updike's writing is so attractive that I don't need the story to be completely believable. Maybe potential to succumb to belief is peculiar to the mind of the beholder?
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Real Witches!, July 16, 2006
As other reviewers note, Updike does spend a lot of time on details; that is what I love about this book. The little details make the book real to me, then Updike throws something so tiny yet unbelievable (Sukie turns milk into cream for her coffee) into the mix. That just knocks my socks off! Of course there is plenty of Updike's neurosis about adultery, his conflict about God and religion, commentary on bourgeois mores. I just love his decriptions of the Lenox mansion, the insufferable wives of the witches' lovers, their spells made up of household items. I love how he describes Alexandra's Algerian brocade jacket and Sukie's suede skirt. The characters seem like so many of my mom's friends when I was growing up - women without husbands sort of befriending each other (divorcees and widows are a threat to married women). I don't have any scholarly discussion to add - it's been done here already. Just wanted to chime in about how much I love this book.
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