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28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sin that bothers me.", October 23, 2008
(3.5 stars) Thirty years after Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie worked their black magic on their enemies in Eastwick, Rhode Island, earning the enmity of many of its citizens, they decide to return to Eastwick for a summer vacation. The three women have all been widowed, and they have not had much contact during the thirty year interim. Reconnecting initially through letters and phone calls, the women have traveled to international destinations during the previous two summers--first, a trip by Alexandra and Jane to Egypt, and the following year, a trip by all three to China. Though all of them have changed, they look forward to their return to Eastwick, partly out of curiosity and partly out of guilt for the death of Jenny Gabriel, the young bride of Darryl Van Horne, who had had affairs with all three "witches."
Their return to Eastwick is shocking to its inhabitants. Taking the only summer rental they can find--at the former Van Horne mansion, now condos--they discover that the town has changed, not surprisingly, and many of the people they knew there are now dead. "Eastwick's lost its messy charm," Jane notes. "There's something unfriendly out there," she believes. When they discover that Christopher Gabriel is in town, they know that this "disciple" of Darryl Van Horne, who is also the brother of Jenny Gabriel, will bring about a showdown that may cost them their lives.
Updike's prose often sparkles, filled with the figurative language he has made a trademark, and his tone keeps the reader amused and interested. The dialogue is often wooden, however, as he sometimes uses it to provide essential background information while attempting to advance the action. The first one hundred pages are devoted to the women's trips to Egypt and China, where they (and the reader) get lectured about other belief systems concerning man's relationship to the world of death, suggesting similarities between these civilizations from the ancient past and the women's own witchcraft.
The "witches" do not arrive in Eastwick until more than one-third of the book has passed, and though they try to correct past wrongs by doing present good deeds, they must also "watch their backs." The intensity of their malevolence, an involving feature of 1984's The Witches of Eastwick, disappears here, and with it much of the fun of reading. Here they are the possible victims of another's revenge--relatively passive characters who spend more time remembering their past lives than in making the most of their present lives. Those who enjoyed Witches, with its imaginative and unapologetically vengeful characters, may be disappointed by the characters' desire to make amends here, and the author's focus, late in the book, on possible scientific explanations for some of the witches' powers makes the novel less fantastic and, frankly, more pedestrian. n Mary Whipple
The Witches of Eastwick
Pigeon Feathers, my all-time favorite Updike creation,one of the best novellas ever written
Rabbit Angstrom : The Four Novels : Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, Rabbit at Rest (Everyman's Library)
Couples
In the Beauty of the Lilies
The Cambridge Companion to John Updike (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Eastwick Redux, November 7, 2008
I missed the witches and am grateful for Mr. Updike's return to Eastwick. Life has mellowed our Sukie, Alex and Jane, but this is true of all of us. Having lost their husbands, the three witches travel the world and end up, in all places, back in Eastwick. The town has changed, but there is enough of the old magic left to get this trio into trouble. Many reviews I have read take issue with the first chapter, which is devoted to the three witches traveling the globe and reconnecting. Updike is NOT for lazy readers. Updike takes us to ancient places where man tries to make sense of death through magic and nature. Updike's writing has lost none of its precession. He has cracked the code of human behavior and translates it to the page better than most.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Coven Re-constituted. , November 4, 2008
It's been 30 years since the comely coven of Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie left Eastwick behind for separate lives with newly conjured husbands, Alexandra to an artist in New Mexico; Jane to a well-to-do financial consultant in New England; and Sukie to a nouveau-riche entrepreneur in Connecticut. Who's to say if they left Eastwick for a second chance at love and happiness or was it to escape the shame and guilt of having killed one of their own? Perhaps they left to avoid the ire of their numerous enemies, who coveted their beauty, power, and sexual freedom?
Suffice it to say, gone are the days of meeting together to raise the cone of power. No more maleficia. No more orgiastic sabbats with their shared lover Daryl Van Horne. No more feasting upon fine delicacies in the grand rooms of Lenox Manor. Alexandra fills her days devoted to her husband and his craft, somehow finding the time to nurture her own. Whereas Jane somewhat enjoys the leisurely pace of the idle rich, and Sukie expresses her creativity by writing romance novels just this side of pornography.
Having settled into the routine of their lives, the women suddenly find themselves widowed with the death of their respective husbands. The witches now face the grim reality of their own death and seek to renew the friendships of the past. After having had little contact in the past thirty years, the women initially reconnect through letters and phone calls. These calls first lead to Alexandra and Jane taking a trip to Egypt together, and the following year, Sukie joins them for a trip to China.
After having to persuade Alexandra a bit, the women decide to return to the "scene of their primes" as one of the witches describes Eastwick. Interestingly, they end up renting Lenox Manor (now divided into several condos and renamed to reflect the fact) for the months of August and September. Though many years have passed, they begrudgingly look forward to their return trip to Eastwick, which they attribute to both a sense of curiosity as well as a sense of guilt for their part in the demise of Jenny Gabriel, the wife of Daryl Van Horne.
The return of the witches to Eastwick shocks its citizens, and Jane in particular gets a peculiar shock in return, or rather a series of shocks. Alexandra un-expectantly meets the wife of one of her past lovers who attributes her daughter's inability to conceive to the coven's black magic. Sukie meets with a former lover, eleven years her junior, only to find that fantasy has given away to reality and her former boy-toy is now an old man. Not only has his six-pack grown into a keg, but his hand has become deformed due to an accident which occurred aboard the ship on which he used to work.
About the same time Jane suffers a health scare, she realizes that Christopher Gabriel, the brother of the girl they murdered, is also in town. The women come to believe that Darryl has shared some of his power with the man they describe as his `disciple' and that he is the cause of Jane's problems. The witches decide to flex their magical muscles once again and raise the cone of power. However, this time they decide to attempt to right the wrongs of the past. Jane seeks a healing, while Alexandra prays to the Goddess to allow her old enemy's daughter to conceive, and Sukie makes her wish for her former lover to be made whole again.
They barely raised the cone of power before the unthinkable happens. Their enemy claims his first victim from among their number and the two witches left behind must counteract his spell or be taken next.
It would be a mistake to say that I read this book, but rather I devoured it; as once I started reading it, I could not put Widows down until I had digested the whole story. I very much enjoyed the author's descriptions of the many places the witches visited during their travels as well as their philosophical banter which was quite interesting. I found the women's attempts to understand and actually utilize today's technology (cell phones, hybrid cars, etc...) both amusing and realistic.
I especially liked the description of the witches' ritual to raise the cone of power and was delighted that the author actually attempted to somewhat update their practices. The fact that the witches used terms such as chakras, athame, and Wicca hinted that at least one of them had continued her studies on some level. I would have loved to have gotten the elderly witches observations on how the craft has come to the forefront of society's consciousness. How the practice of magic and witchcraft isn't as hidden as it was in their day. What might these witches have thought of Buffy or The Charmed Ones?
There were a few instances where I was slightly offended such as Alexandra's reaction when it dawned upon her that one of the men in her tour group was gay; or not so much disgusted but disturbed as when Sukie (a sixty-something year old woman, mind you) got a facial after orally pleasuring one of her lovers. However, I chalked up Alexandra's reaction to her personal prejudice due to her age as well as having been betrayed by Daryl, who had left the women so long ago for the bed of another man.
Finally, I found the author's attempt to explain magic in scientific terms somewhat boring as well as Chris explanation as to how he attempted to duplicate the witch's maleficia by manipulating electrons too clinical albeit not impossible. I felt that any attempt to dissect the process of magic detracts from the mystery of the power and removes any sense of the enjoyment of reading.
I found Widows to be a fast, interesting, and delightful read, save for a few inconsistencies and aforementioned detractions. The author did an excellent job of maintaining the characterizations he created with the first novel, with just enough changed to show that the women had matured, or rather had grown. I had hoped for an appearance of Daryl Van Horne, but perhaps his time has passed. At the young age of seventy-something, lets hope that this chapter in the witches lives isn't their epilogue and that they have just enough life in them for one more story--if only we didn't have to wait another 28 years.
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