Read Summer 2010; Re-read January 2011Summary: Wickedly entertaining. The Witches of Eastwick is about three divorced women in the New England town of Eastwick who discover that after being abandoned or divorced from their husbands, they have supernatural powers. Alexandra Spoffard, the sculptress, is the leader of the three. She makes little clay figurines (called "bubbies"), stores too much tomato sauce, and is carrying on an affair with Joe Marino, the town plumber. Jane Smart, the cellist, is probably the most 'wicked' of the three, she is having an affair with Raymond Neff, the high school music teacher (24). Sukie Rougemont, the writer, is a reporter, columnist for the Word, the town newspaper, and is having an affair with Ed Parsley the Unitarian minister and Clyde Gabriel, the editor-in-chief of the Word. The witches circle is interrupted by the arrival of Darryl Van Horne to the Lennox mansion just outside of town by the coast. Darryl is at once both crude and seemingly sophisticated--he spits when he talks, tells dirty jokes, yet plays music and collects art and is working on renewable energy. Each of the witches end up paying Van Horne a visit, Alexandra the last and most opposed. Act 1 ends with an orgy in Van Horne's elaborate hot tub room after a game of magical tennis. Act ii begins with Ed leaving town and the climax is Clyde Gabriel's murder of his wife and his suicide. Jenny and Chris, the Gabriel's two kids, move back into town and become "part" of the group. Act iii begins with Sukie selling the Gabriel home and Jenny and Chris moving in with Darryl. Eventually, Van Horne marries Jenny. The witches are angered. They put a hex on Jenny and riddle her body with cancer. She ends up dying. Van Horne turns out to be Chris' gay lover and they move to NYC. It is suggested that he was gay all along and only married Jenny to get inheritance money to ward off his creditors. The coven of witches kind of disbands and faded away. Each witch performs a spell and gets married again. And all of them leave Eastwick.Act i: The CovenOf plants tomatoes seemed the most human, eager and fragile and prone to rot (6). Gardening is given sexual innuendo.(14) Alexandra wills a thunderstorm to clear the beach. "Not until midlife did she truly believe that she had a right to exist, that the forces of nature had created her not as an afterthought and companion--a bent rib, as the infamous Malleus Maleficarum had it--but as the mainstay of the continuing Creation, as the daughter of a daughter and a woman whose daughters in turn would bear daughters.""One of the liberations of becoming a witch had been that she had ceased constantly weighing herself" (17).(18ff) Description of Alexandra as artist.(22) Sukie's description of a year of eating zucchini. Hilarious."Being a divorcee in a small town is a little like playing Monopoly; eventually you land on all the properties" (25).(67) "Healing belonged to their natures, and if the world accused them of coming between men and wives, of tying the disruptive ligature, of knotting the aiguillette that places the kink of impotence or emotional coldness in the entrails of a marriage seemingly secure in its snugly roofed and darkened house, and if the world not merely accused but burned them alive in the tongues of indignant opinion, that was the price they must pay. It was fundamental and instinctive, it was womanly, to want to heal--to apply the poultice of acquiescent flesh to the wound of a man's desire, to give his closeted spirit the exaltation of seeing a witch slip out of her clothes and go skyclad in a room of tawdry motel furniture."(73-75) Description of Felicia Gabriel--outraged by everything. Brilliant.(83) It was nice to have yourself known by a man...(84) Van Horne's opinion of hunting.(102) America teaches its children that every passion can be transmuted into an occasion to buy.(98-120) Description of tennis game and orgy in hot tub.Act ii: MaleficiaBegins with Ed Parsley running off with Dawn Polanski, a local teenager, for the Movement, some anti-government, anti-establishment group.(131) Sukie's talk of Ed Parsley with Van Horne. "Nobody knows what a minister is supposed to be doing, just give his silly sermon on Sundays, it's really such a ripoff."(142-156) Description of Clyde Gabriel's murder of his wife and subsequent suicide."Language, he was thinking, perhaps is the curse, that took us out of Eden" (146). "Marriage is like two people locked up with one lesson to read, over and over, until the words become madness" (149). "then a redness in his overstuffed skull was followed by blackness, giving way, with the change of a single letter, to blankness" (156).(185-191) Is a bit of interesting dialogue between the three witches and Jenny Gabriel. There are hardly any referents for the dialogue. Significance?(200) Alexandra kills an innocent...a puppy.(201) Delightful description of the town. Historical place, social commentary.(210) Big quote. Ends Act ii.Act iii: GuiltBegins with Sukie selling the Gabriel house, and Jenny and Christ moving in with Van Horne.(220) Alexandra kills squirrel. Throws it out into bog behind her house--like the tin foil, hair, wax, pins she throws out after the witches hex it to curse Jenny.(287ff) Van Horne preaches a sermon.
I came into possession of a paperback copy of John Updike's 1984 novel "The Witches of Eastwick" at a Borders store in Burleson, Texas, on March 30 of this year, the bookstore closing its doors at the end of business that very day. There were a few half-filled bookshelves left in an otherwise empty interior. The books were 90% off, and I bought this $15 paperback for $1.50. Updike is worth full price; a bargain is even better. The novel looks at the lives of three women with witch-like powers in a coastal Rhode Island town in the late 1960s and the arrival of a mysterious man from New York City. The book has Updike's amazing prose, his extraordinary power of observation and detailed description, and a healthy dose of humor. Take this description of Rhode Island: "There is a kind of metallic green stain, bitten deep into Depression-era shingles, that exists nowhere else. Once you cross the state line, whether at Pawtucket or Westerly, a subtle change occurs, a cheerful dishevelment, a contempt for appearances, a chimerical uncaring. Beyond the clapboard slums yawn lunar stretches where only an abandoned roadside stand offering the ghost of last summer's CUKES betrays the yearning, disruptive presence of man." Updike, who died in 2009, does a believable job, I think, in creating the three central female characters and inhabiting their minds. His wife must have helped in his descriptions of hairstyles, clothing, and accessories. This is a description of one of the women, Sukie, the reporter, mentioning the other two women: "Sukie had nothing of what she would call an artistic talent but she loved social existence and had been driven by the reduced circumstances that attend divorce to write for the local weekly, the Eastwick Word. As she marched with her bright lithe stride up and down Dock Street listening for gossip and speculating upon the fortunes of the shops, Alexandra's gaudy figurines in the window of the Yapping Fox, or a poster in the window of the Armenians' hardware store advertising a chamber-music concert to be held in the Unitarian Church and including Jane Smart, cello thrilled her like a glint of beach glass in the sand or a quarter found shining on the dirty sidewalk – a bit of code buried in the garble of daily experience, a stab of communication between the inner and outer world." Having lived in New England for 10 years, I enjoyed Updike's topographical and psychological portrayal of that region and its residents and the play of ocean and land. Updike lived in Massachusetts for five decades. "Witches" is not quite on the same level as the "Rabbit" quartet, which won Updike two Pulitzer Prizes, but it is a fun and rewarding read.
What do You think about The Witches Of Eastwick (1996)?
Having seen the movie first, the cast of characters was already set in my mind. I could not envision them in any other way. This didn't really get in the way, but some of the differences in premise and plot did disappoint.(view spoiler)[I think I liked it better that (in the movie) the women didn't know that they were witches originally and were therefore surprised by their power. I like how Van Horne built their confidence in their passions. Those passions, in turn, fueling their sexual appetites. (hide spoiler)]
—Almeta
I first picked this book up on one of my book speed-dating projects, and went back to it when I needed something to read before falling asleep. For John Updike, this really is quite fluffy. That's a good thing because I've abandoned Rabbit, Run at least twice - I just hate the characters so much that I can't even go along with the author on the journey.I'm not really sure whose side to take on this book, because I have read that this was Updike's response to complaints of misogyny in his Rabbit books. But "response" doesn't have to be a remedy, it can be a middle finger too. Are the witches feminist symbols or do they reflect Updike's disdain for women? Can both be true? I don't think they come across as empowering, at least not in 2014, in fact I felt embarrassed for them. Add to that his descriptions of them, which are usually not flattering, and my impression was that Updike wants us to finish the book thinking the witches are fools. If you have only seen the movie, the book is darker and has a completely different ending, so it might be worth the read, but overall I give it a meh.I might still try the Widows of Eastwick someday because it was $1 at the used bookstore, and it might be interesting to see how/if Updike has changed almost 25 years later.
—Jenny (Reading Envy)
I must confess that I was hoping that this book would be a light/fluffy/fun read. I really loved the movie and was looking forward to some light hearted revenge to ease the aching in my brain. Unfortunately for me and my brain, the only things from this book that made it into the movie were the three witches, the horrible rich man (wasn't Jack Nicholson just perfect in this role...totally disgusting but still Jack...you gotta love him), and the game of tennis. Okay, maybe some other stuff too, but not much. This novel is to its movie what Wicked by Gregory Maguire is to its musical. Deep and Dark vs. Warm and Fuzzy.That being said, it was still a good book. Something darker that takes all our faults (physical or otherwise) and displays them right out in the light. A view from the other side of the fence, you know, the side where the people we all judge live. Here are these people, and they're doing these "bad" things, and look, here are the reasons they do them. Not really good reasons, but still reasons. And then, how they feel afterwards. The way Updike writes (or wrote...we lost a great writer this year) you can put yourself in their shoes...I don't think I have ever heard -or will ever hear again- a better justification for a woman who sleeps with married men. Still not totally justified, but with this explanation, you have to say, "Yeah, I can see that." Reminds me a little of Watchmen...people with powers are still people after all, with all the character flaws, but maybe natural reactions are harder to suppress, like picking up a Faberge egg with super strength. Super powers don't come with super control. Wishing the barking dog across the street would just shut up and die doesn't end with a dead dog, but if it did...would you be able to control yourself at two in the morning during a bout of insomnia and menstrual cramps?Updike's descriptives were really potent and he seemed to have a pretty good idea of how the female brain operates even if he didn't present us in the best light. So, over all a pretty good read, even though the ending of the book really makes the feminist in me go, "What!?!" But my feminist side is pretty small so I'll have to read The Widows of Eastwick to see what Mr. Updike had in mind for us (I mean the characters...see what I mean about putting yourself in their shoes?) 26 years later.Favorite quote, "It was nice to have yourself known by a man; it was getting to be known that was embarrassing: all that self-conscious verbalization over too many drinks, and then the bodies revealed with the hidden marks and sags like disappointing presents at Christmastime. But how much of love, when you thought about it, was not of the other but of yourself naked in his eyes: of that rush, that little flight, of shedding your clothes, and being you at last."
—Celery
