Customer Reviews

The Witches of Eastwick

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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?

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.

Reading Updike is like a hike in the woods, where the path suddenly opens onto an amazing and beautiful vista, which leaves a feeling of awe and gratitude as the hike moves forward. In THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, it's these sudden brilliant offerings of expository landscape--Alexandra at the beach during a storm, Alexandra crossing a flooded causeway in her panties, or Jane playing her cello--that make the hike worthwhile. Yes, TWOE also offers an abundant flowering of metaphors, as well as unexpected twists and turns on the narrative path. Even so, this hike isn't all great. And, there are mosquitoes.

Other reviewers have already identified what I view as shortcomings in TWOE. First, there is a gruesome event in the middle, which divides the novel into distinct parts. Here, the first tells the story of the witches--Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie--and their involvement with the very strange Darryl Van Horne, who pushes their artistic sensibilities. Meanwhile, part-two is the denouement, where Updike follows the effect of this gruesome event on the witches and Darryl. In overview, this sounds like well-constructed fiction. But the horrible mid-book tragedy disturbs the arc of the narrative and part-two takes time to develop. For a while, part-two is almost like starting a second novel.

Second, I'd say the witchy talents of Alex, Jane, and Sukie, while always surprising, were unconvincing. Not that I'm an expert. But isn't the genius of magical realism its ability to make the impossible a plausible force in a narrative? Yet in this case, the witchy powers in TWOE just seem like a narrative device, which the women use to channel their anger.

Updike definitely pulls everything together in the final 30 pages. In this respect, TWOE reminded me of Villages, where a brilliant last chapter weaves the disparate pieces of the narrative into a seamless whole. But with both books, this concluding brilliance has an unintended effect: In both, Updike seems to reach back into his narrative to do some housekeeping, not to give final expression to themes that he buried but now exposes in the magic of his final chapter.

Nonetheless, I was pleased that Updike showed such compassion for his witches at the end of this novel. And now that I've read TWOE, I am prepared (and eager) to read The Widows of Eastwick, his just-published sequel, where these sexy thirty-something witches are in their golden years.

In 1986, when the local paper reported on a baseball game between the casts of "Spencer for Hire" and "The Witches of Eastwick," both of which were filming near one another, I started thinking about the latter. I had seen the book in the library, the cover blurbs said it was funny so I checked it out. The only problem is that I was 14 and despite the promise of witchcraft and a dalliance with the Devil, most of the novel went right over my head. It wasn't the fault of the narrative, it's just that Updike was throwing out concepts and artists names and layering symbolism against concrete examples; I just didn't know enough at the time.

Having just reread the book, I am glad to say that it was a much more rewarding experience this time around. And yes, it is funny it its very sly way. It's a sixteenth/seventeenth century witchcraft narrative that has been transported - via magic?- to the late 1960s and the era of social change.

A friend and I now have an ongoing conversation about the book: just what is Updike saying about women really? That alone, without men, they are truly witches and need a man to tame them? Is the book misogynistic, or does it also stand in awe of women and their connection to Nature? No matter what we may think of the book's drawbacks, there is no denying Updike's muscular prose. The book is sublime in its descriptions and storytelling and worth more than one read. Excellent reading.

A warning: fans of the movie, the novel is 75% different. If you try it while expecting the film, you will be disappointed. if you go into it with an open mind, you may be pleasantly surprised.

Likely many will be giving this book a new look now that Updike has published a sequel. Since Updike became a realist at mid-career with his Rabbit novels, not many understood this book. But it is a scathing social satire on post-Protestant America, in the vein of his earlier Couples and Month of Sundays. No holds are barred in this assault on upper middle class spiritual play and pretense. What some call magic realism is in reality witchery presented as disturbingly true, to which is added the punch of a straight up attack on the general acceptance of predatory personal and social relationships in modern white America, male and female. That the witches are initially appealing, sexy, and fun is merely the hook, and it is a cunning one, and some alert readers may even be affronted, once they realize what Updike has done to them. The book at the halfway mark takes a turn for the serious and deadly in a chapter which is one of the best set pieces of prose fiction Updike has ever delivered in his career, and the serious reader simply can't feel the same way about the book after. Death is death and murder is murder.

Readers should avoid the tacky Hollywood movie of this film like the plague. It has zero relation to the deeper themes--indeed it is almost the sort of approach to witchery and sex that the writer -- in this book anyway-- openly despises. Even the characters and plot have only the thinnest relation to the novel. This is a shame because Witches is near the top of fictional product this writer has ever delivered, and the horrible film leaves most thinking "they've got it."

I am avoiding any plot summary as not to spoil the full enjoyment of this book, which is written plain and clear and should simply be read.

I wanted to like this book. There are passages in it that are written so expressively that you feel like you are there - the music Jane plays before her cello is eaten is an example. But I didn't like the three witch-women - I don't think Updike liked them either. There was so much male fantasy about women that wasn't believeable (I know it's a book about witches) Since it was written about the early 70s, I guess maybe Updike thought he had some enlightened male insight into women and their behavior and thought patterns and desires but I just found it chauvanistic and wishful. And kind of boring at the end.

There's a scene in "The Witches of Eastwick" when one of the witches raises a thunderstorm on a beach. She then kills a number of sand crabs, because all magic is based on the principle of sacrifice (i.e., death). The book gives us this rule, and then ignores it. The witches paralyze people, transmute tennis balls into birds, make feathers & pieces of gravel come from their enemies' mouths, etc. and there's no sacrifice. If you're not a literary giant like Updike, this is known as sloppy writing. The witches themselves are an unhappy lot. Their anger oozes through the pages. They hate their kids; they use their powers to hurt people (they are feminists, yet the people they hurt are always other women); they are primarily sexual creatures (an old male fantasy); they become witches by dumping their men, yet men continue to define them. The strange thing is that "The Witches of Eastwick" was praised by some feminists, despite the fact that it's portrayal of feminism is quite unflattering. The movie is no masterpiece, but it added little things Updike left out, most notably a plot. This is one case where the movie is better than the book.

Reading this book was like pushing a locomotive through a sea of molasses. Updike is apparently known for his very heavy descriptions, focusing in and in on seemingly unimportant details (like the scenery), and 'Eastwick' is no exception. Whether this appeals to you or not will most likely determine how much you like it. Literary trifles aside, this is a rich, sex-laden novel with lots of social commentary and underlying meaning. It's almost nothing like the movie as well; the characters are spiteful, hypocritical and vengeful, the magic seems to have more symbolism, and Darryl's role is somewhat different.

One flaw I saw with the novel was the fact that very little happened with any consequence. The witches have affairs all over the place, people die, and magic is thrown around a good deal, but it seems more for the sake of getting a vague 'impression' of what's going on, rather than pushing the non-existant plot forward. Much of the consequences in this novel usually result in something being gossiped about, and then it's back to the sex and hyper-focused detail and narrative meanderings, and then more sex.

In short, it'll be hard to sit on the fence about this one- it's not a likable book, but it'll be entertaining and thoughtful if you want it to be.

To be successful as a writer today (and I use the word succesful in its most vulgur form) it often seems that one must be either horribly mediocre or overly self-indulgent. As such, it is always a pleasure to find a book that is, at its heart, a well-writen page turner. Updike's developed wit and ability to offer concise but insightful descriptions elevate his work above much of the fiction that is popular today. The Witches of Eastiwck is a novel that is both light and heavy; the intriguing characters and slightly quirky plot twists compel one to turn the pages quickly, but the underlying messages about sexuality, love, and the human need for approbation will likely weigh on the reader's mind for quite some time