The Widows of Eastwick

Maybe I liked this better than the first novel because I too have become an old woman since the original was written. The Widows has more depth & subtlety, as if the characters were real people who have stretched and warped with the passage of time. There are painful truths here, too, for the balance of nature reasserts itself, as it will, in the long-delayed results of the witches' 1970's tinkering with fate. My favorite of Updike's many clever, sharply realized novels of middle class suburban life.

The Widows was just as enteraining as the Witches. It was good to catch up with these three again. This is Updike at his best. The world has lost one of its best (if not the best)of the contemporary authors. No one else has his ability to get inside a character's(especially a woman's) psyche. I moun his loss.

Updike has been around for years and his command of our language is superb. This coupled with his wit and grasp of "the American" way has made him one of the foremost chroniclers of the American psyche.

More than 30 years has passed since the three lusty, thirty-something divorcees of Eastwick, Rhode Island, romped through the bedrooms of nearly every married man in town, casting their spells and rightfully earning their reputations as wicked witches of the East. After accidentally murdering a local woman with their ill-conceived magical mischief, they left the village behind and were never heard from again. Together, they attracted a powerful current of wickedness, but apart they were nothing more or less than normal women pursuing normal lives with husbands, careers and families. They have kept in casual contact over the years with the occasional card or phone call, but without their mysterious cone of power, their interests have diverged. Now approaching age 70, the women are all widowed. Alexandra, the eldest and perhaps most caring of the three, has settled near Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband, who has gained fame as a potter. When he dies, she stokes her wanderlust with a trip to Canada. Upon her return she finds a letter from Jane, the dour, acidic one of the trio, who has recently lost her husband and suggests an overseas trip. In Egypt, Jane puckishly tries a small spell in a pharaoh's tomb --- just to see if the old sizzle is still there. Startled, Alexandra thinks she sees the mummy move but, not anxious to bring back the old days, ignores it. On a trip to China, another ancient artifact seems oddly alive in Jane's presence, and she suspects that her friend is up to her old tricks. When they return from their second trip, they hear from Sukie, the younger, vivacious cellist, that she too has lost her husband. Sukie now lives in Massachusetts, and they invite her to join them on another overseas adventure. Her financial situation is not as secure as her two old friends, so she suggests that they spend the summer back in Eastwick. When they hear that the mansion where they first discovered their powers under the spell of Daryl Van Horn has been turned into a timeshare condo property, they rent a suite. Alexandra, Jane and Sukie may have put Eastwick behind them, but Eastwick hasn't forgotten them. Someone or something there is out for retribution, and the ladies discover that the devilish Daryl Van Horn's experiments with electrical currents may have some lasting effects. The temptation to regenerate their old powers proves irresistible, and they lure the person they suspect is doing them harm to the scene of their former magical experimentations with unexpected and tragic results. The Widows of Eastwick, like all mortal souls, are diminished by their years yet strengthened by their experience. As they encounter their old lovers and rivals, they are confronted with sometimes ugly and often amusing truths about themselves. John Updike's mastery of our language and uncanny ability to touch on women's inner psyches holds this story of aging beauty together perhaps better than the plot. His introspective musings on the human e

(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 writ