BEFORE THEY WERE THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICK, OUR HEROINES WERE A TRIO OF DELIGHTFULLY WICKED WITCHES.

In a small New England town in that hectic era when the sixties turned into the seventies, there lived three witches. Alexandra Spoffard, a sculptress, could create thunderstorms. Jane Smart, a cellist, could fly. The local gossip columnist, Sukie Rougemont, could turn milk into cream. Divorced but hardly celibate, the wonderful witches one day found themselves quite under the spell of the new man in town, Darryl Van Horne, whose strobe-lit hot tub room became the scene of satanic pleasures.

To tell you any more, dear reader, would be to spoil the joy of reading this hexy, sexy novel by the incomparable John Updike.

Praise for New York Times Bestseller The Witches of Eastwick:

“A dazzling book . . . Updike is devilishly clever.”
–Los Angeles Times

“New England’s past and present are brilliantly interwoven in this narrative . . . [Updike] has brought [this] culture wittily and radiantly to life.”
–The New York Times

“A great deal of fun to read . . . fresh, constantly entertaining . . . John Updike [is] a wizard of language and observation.”
–The Philadelphia Inquirer

“A wicked entertainment . . . In book after book, Updike’s fine, funny impressionistic art strips the full casings of everydayness from objects we have known all our lives and makes them shine with fresh new connections.”
–The New Republic

“Witty, ironic, engrossing, punctuated by transports of spectacular prose.”
–Time

“Vintage Updike, which is to say among the best fiction we have.”
–Newsday

Selected by Time as one of the Five Best Works of Fiction of the Year


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Dessert for your mind
Comment: Before you read 'Widows' read "The Witches of Eastwick". JU's vivid descriptions require you to lick your fingers before turning the pages. Keep a tissue in your lap to wipe the corners of your mouth. Reading about Alexandra, Jane and Sukie, along with their fascination with Darryl Van Horne will keep you under JU's spell til the last page is done.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Book diverges from the popular movie
Comment: If I could give 3.5 stars I would. This is one of the first books I have read by Updike and I wish I had read it before watching the movie. The book was quite different and the witches were more evil in the book. But it was subtle evil. Jenny was not even in the book and there is no way the movie witches would have killed her or killed squirrels or barking dogs of the neighbors.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile
Comment: 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.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Scathing Social Satire
Comment: 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.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: I loved it... but not in the way I thought
Comment: Like most people, my first exposure to "Witches" was the movie. I agree with other reviewers that the book is nothing like the film - it's much darker and more ambiguous. I picked it up at a flea market for light bathtub reading but ended up not being able to put it down.

I liked that the world with witchcraft in it just was. To me, there's not much point in exposition unless something is confusing.

It's true that the characters are not, strictly-speaking, likable. They're cliquey and small-minded, and ruthless. They're also vulnerable, warm, and completely understandable. As a woman in my mid-thirties, I thought it was rather clever to use magic as a metaphor for the mixed blessing of age and experience. Their power is real and at times incredibly strong, even fatal. But it doesn't make them happier or ultimately more successful.

I didn't find it contradictory that the characters were in touch with nature/life but also rather cavalier about bringing death or hopping into bed with other people's husbands or even caring for their own children - they are witches after all, not girl scouts. In the same way, I appreciated that the "devil" turned out to be too good to be true - hardly substantial at all except as a catalyst for the witches' activities. All this, I thought, dove-tailed nicely with the "me generation" self-absorption that permeated the book.

Overall, it was a completely fun, absorbing, root for the flawed anti-heroines read. If you're gen-x, you may recognize these characters from the less savory parts of your childhood, but with any luck you'll just find that part of the entertainment.

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