vastly enjoyable.Updike captures the tone of women of a certain age and frame of mind-their crushing directness, their cynical optimism-with the lack of sentimentality that betokens a deep and honest love.' 'The Witches of Eastwick is John Updike with his shoes off. In developing Only Updike could come up withĪ funny, optimistic and satisfying ending to this richly imagined tale.' 'Perceptive, witty, and more lighthearted than Updike's recent fiction, his new novel immediately engages the reader with its audaciously conceived protagonists: three witches, all living in modern-day Rhode Island.the drama is deliciously slow And if his view is rarely optimistic, it is always loving and unfailingly entertaining.' With his contemporary coven grounding the novel in mischief and midlife despair, Updike takes off on an ingenious survey of '60s manners and suburban morals. 'As broadly hilarious as it is gently profound. Risky, intelligent, a lover of our language and a celebrant of flesh, goods and needfulness.' The reader than John Updike Updike is ample, 'No writer working today can invoke process or memory-the precision of the one, the bitter pleasure of the other-with more satisfaction to

The witchcraft scenes are oddly convincing, thanks to their grounding in everyday detail.' 'The Witches of Eastwick manifests most of Updike's virtues it is witty, ironic, engrossing, and punctuated by transports of spectacular prose. Margaret Atwood The New York Times Book Review The other reasons have to do with the skill and inventiveness of the writing, the accuracy of the detail, the sheer energy of the witches and, above all, the practicality of the charms.'

That's the serious reason for reading this book.

As for the witches themselves, there's a strong suggestion that they are products of Eastwick's-read America's-own fantasy life. 'Vintage Updike, which is to say among the best fiction we have.'

an entertaining romp.for those of us who enjoy laughing out loud while reading and losing ourselves in a familiar, yet subtly enchanted world, Updike's latest is a trick-or-treat fantasy that will not disappoint your sense of mischief-or of literature.' 'A wry, raunchy, cleverly contemporary fable.

The witches of eastwick novel