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The Witches of Eastwick: A Novel
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“John Updike is the great genial sorcerer of American letters [and] The Witches of Eastwick [is one of his] most ambitious works.... [A] comedy of the blackest sort.” (The New York Times Book Review)Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms Jane, a cellist, floats on the air and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream.Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwick - and through the even darker fantasies of the town’ collective psyche.“A great deal of fun to read...fresh, constantly entertaining.... John Updike [is] a wizard of language and observation.” (The Philadelphia Inquirer)“Vintage Updike, which is to say among the best fiction we have.” (Newsday)
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