The Witches of Eastwick

I've never seen the movie but I have to say I loved the book. Not just a fluffy story about witchy chicks and some guy, but of course social commentary re: feminism and the changing world in the early '70s. Updike is overstylistic sometimes, which works well during the sensual and witchy scenes and less so in other places, but overall, it's a style that can transport the reader. I read this one very, very slowly because I wanted to savor every word. **UPDATE** I watched the movie last night and it was NOTHING like the book! I mean, NOTHING! Three women and a guy and they're in a small town, that's about it. A drag to watch after enjoying the book so much. Not recommended. The book = def'ly recommended.

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.

As other reviewers note, Updike does spend a lot of time on details; that is what I love about this book. The little details make the book real to me, then Updike throws something so tiny yet unbelievable (Sukie turns milk into cream for her coffee) into the mix. That just knocks my socks off! Of course there is plenty of Updike's neurosis about adultery, his conflict about God and religion, commentary on bourgeois mores. I just love his decriptions of the Lenox mansion, the insufferable wives of the witches' lovers, their spells made up of household items. I love how he describes Alexandra's Algerian brocade jacket and Sukie's suede skirt. The characters seem like so many of my mom's friends when I was growing up - women without husbands sort of befriending each other (divorcees and widows are a threat to married women). I don't have any scholarly discussion to add - it's been done here already. Just wanted to chime in about how much I love this book.

John Updike astutely recognizes the modern American suburb, with its hypocritical social mores and superstitions, as a rich literary setting. Into this milieu he introduces the fantastical and invents a tale of what life would be like for three divorced and bored housewives, who happen to be witches, living in such a place -- the fictitious Eastwick, Rhode Island -- in the late 1960's. It's like Updike is channeling Nathaniel Hawthorne through "Rabbit Redux."The women are Alexandra Spofford, a sculptress, Jane Smart, a cellist, and Sukie Rougemont, the local gossip columnist. They drink a lot, neglect their kids, have sex with married men, and cast spells to torment their enemies, who are usually their lovers' wives; they have the traditional witchlike manners of being vindictive, temperamental, and spiteful. They've never desired a man in common until they meet a vaguely devilish fellow named Darryl Van Horne who has bought an old mansion on the outskirts of town. Van Horne is quite mysterious: He's a Manhattanite, a pianist, a collector of tacky nouveau art, and a renegade scientist, trying to discover impossibly efficient methods of generating electricity. He takes an interest in Alexandra's crude little sculptures, accompanies Jane in some sonatas, and encourages Sukie to write novels. He invites them to play tennis (where their magic lends itself to some creative cheating) and partake of the orgiastic pleasures of his hot tub. The witches' auras induce strange and tragic effects on the lives of their lovers. Ed Parsley, the Unitarian minister, runs off to join the anti-war movement, leaving his churlish wife Brenda to take over the pulpit. Clyde Gabriel, the editor of Sukie's newspaper, is stuck with a gabby wife who gets her satisfaction from finding fault with everything. But it's the Gabriels' adult daughter Jenny that serves to drive a wedge between the witches and Van Horne. When Jenny shows up in town from Chicago, Sukie takes pity on the seemingly pathetic girl and invites her to join the "coven" at Van Horne's mansion. Jenny attracts Van Horne's amorous attentions, but his intentions, it turns out, confound even the witches' intuition. Popular culture has interpreted the witch mystique as a form of feminine self-empowerment -- women willing themselves to be able to act in retribution or defense against men's hurtful actions -- so it makes sense that the witches in the novel imply that witchcraft is an untapped power all women have, particularly those who have been hurt by or are unhappy with the men in their lives. And it makes sense for Updike to have set the novel in the era of the Women's Movement of the 1960's, where witchcraft would have shed a new, different light on liberation. Are the witches of Eastwick liberated? Probably so, but it's too bad they're so miserable nonetheless.

The Witches of Eastwick takes a touchingly funny jab at the concept of witchcraft. As well written as Updike's other novels, Witches allows us to cringe, laugh, scream, and fall in love. (And, according to male friends, is definitely not a "chick book.")