Couples

This book, "Couples", is by far, John Updike's best--it's a masterpiece, and, one of the most controversial books I've read in my life. From the beginning, when the Hanema's first arrive to the community, everything starts to unravel. Even though this book's lengthy at 458 pages, you have to read every last page in order for you to understand it, I absolutely love Updike's "go-there" style of writing. It deals with controversial issues, such as abortion (illegal back in 1968 when this book was written), and, using freedom and sex in the same sentence, and the church, as well as other mind-bending things. The ending is shocking and sad, and, it will anger you. This book will definitely make you want to check out where you move before you move there..this novel beats all the soap operas, have to read it!

I don't think anyone reads John Updike books to feel good about themselves, unless they want to feel glad that they are not the people in his novels. His characters are constantly flawed, strewn with cracks, by turns petty or manipulative or simply ignorant, doing things out of self-interest or boredom and seeming to not understand the consequences of their actions, or knowing them full well and doing it anyway because they just don't care. Which, in all honesty, is what makes his books worth reading. Couples is the story of a small town and the yes, couples that live in bored upper class leisure in the town and how they interact. That's pretty much it and yet it remains strangely fascinating, even though all Updike really does is play them off each other in as many permutations as he can manage until he runs out of pages. At the time I think the book was considered shocking for its frank depiction of infidelity and at times it does seem like all anyone in the town is interested in is sleeping with as many other people as possible. Yet it's not the act itself that matters, but the reasons why they do it. Beceause they're bored or they're not in love anymore or they feel constricted, because they want to get a reaction, or maybe convince themselves that they can still react. The action, as it is, tends to center around Piet, who is married to Angela but seems to still enjoy playing the field and it's what he does that drives what there is of the plot. Much like Updike's Rabbit, he's not a role model but an extremely flawed human being who does callous things and convinces himself that he's doing them out of kindness. But he just fits in with the rest of the town's couples, who drift through their days trying to find some sort of excitement amidst all the sameness, dinner parties, basketball games, vacations, lounging around to avoid the notion that they're just killing time. Not every character is as well drawn, and telling some of the minor characters apart can be difficult at times. But the main ones linger and resonate, in all their loves and foibles, their jealousies and their loyalties. Updike's prose remains as sharp as ever, he rarely builds to explosions of excitement but instead moves it along in tiny charges, creating little waves that over time become devastating. Sometimes he gets a bit carried away with the descriptive metaphors but that's par for the course for him, it's his style. His dialogue is especially good, even when it's being elusive, it can suddenly shift to cutting and raw and the best scenes are the ones with all the couples together as they dance and dart around each other, revealing by not revealing. The bits between the stronger characters, like Piet and Freddy Thorne, go to another level entirely. It's not a happy book, more about people existing and making the wrong choices, and how those poor choices can come back to haunt them. These days the idea of the suburban life only hiding a miserable bored

Updike makes the reader feel like a voyeur privy to the most intimate acts and discussions in the characters' lives. We are transported to the fictional New England town of Tarbox in the 60's and introduced to its suburban inhabitants. They have cocktail parties and play tennis and basketball and raise children and discuss politics, consumerism, gossip, and sex. Yet beyond its Peyton Place scenario, the characters are truly complex, searching for answers, happiness, joy, excitement, anything! Updike brilliantly blends literary prose and imagery with frank situations and absorbing dialogue to create a beautiful American portrait that is extraordinarily accurate. It satisifes the reader's quest for truth, drama, and philisophical stimulation.I have read this novel 3 times and become completely imersed and enthralled each time.

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.

Reviled in its time as a great author's descent into tabloid, Peyton Place populism, Couples has proven itself to be one of Updike's most memorable. A devastating, erotic, wonderful examination of the underbelly of love and the American dream, it is also a Last Exit to Brooklyn of the suburbs.