About this product

Product Identifiers

PublisherRandom House Publishing Group

ISBN-100345477316

ISBN-139780345477316

eBay Product ID (ePID)45412099

Product Key Features

Book TitleVillages : a Novel

Number of Pages336 Pages

LanguageEnglish

TopicPsychological, Family Life, Literary, Coming of Age

Publication Year2005

GenreFiction

AuthorJohn Updike

FormatTrade Paperback

Dimensions

Item Height0.7 in

Item Weight9.9 Oz

Item Length8.2 in

Item Width5.6 in

Additional Product Features

Intended AudienceTrade

Dewey Edition22

Reviews"Updike in top form, every sentence a marvel of insight and imagery . . . wise and elegiac and warmed by the sense of reconciliation with the most vexatious elements of Updike's fiction: women and sex."-- People (Critic's Choice) "As powerful as anything to be found in Updike . . . full of pointed, humorous and occasionally acerbic remarks on contemporary life."-- Chicago Tribune "Eloquent, erotic . . . a gorgeous geography of desire."-- O: The Oprah Magazine From the eBook edition., "Updike in top form, every sentence a marvel of insight and imagery . . . wise and elegiac and warmed by the sense of reconciliation with the most vexatious elements of Updike's fiction: women and sex."-- People (Critic's Choice) "As powerful as anything to be found in Updike . . . full of pointed, humorous and occasionally acerbic remarks on contemporary life."-- Chicago Tribune "Eloquent, erotic . . . a gorgeous geography of desire."-- O: The Oprah Magazine

Dewey Decimal813/.54

SynopsisThis novel follows Owen Mackenzie, a computer programmer, from his boyhood in rural Pennsylvania to his final years in a New England geriatric community. Along the way, Mackenzie becomes entangled with numerous women, two of whom become his wives., A delightful, witty, passionate novel that follows its hero from the Depression era to the early twenty-first century--from a master of American letters and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the acclaimed Rabbit series. John Updike's twenty-first novel, a bildungsroman, follows Owen Mackenzie from his birth in the semi-rural Pennsylvania town of Willow to his retirement in the rather geriatric community of Haskells Crossing, Massachusetts. In between these two settlements comes Middle Falls, Connecticut, where Owen, an early computer programmer, founds with a partner, Ed Mervine, the successful firm of E-O Data, which is housed in an old gun factory on the Chunkaunkabaug River. Owen's education (Bildung) is not merely technical but liberal, as the humanity of his three villages, especially that of their female citizens, works to disengage him from his youthful innocence. As a child he early felt an abyss of calamity beneath the sunny surface quotidian, yet also had a dreamlike sense of leading a charmed existence. The women of his life, including his wives, Phyllis and Julia, shed what light they can. At one juncture he reflects, "How lovely she is, naked in the dark! How little men deserve the beauty and mercy of women!" His life as a sexual being merges with the communal shelter of villages: "A village is woven of secrets, of truths better left unstated, of houses with less window than opaque wall." This delightful, witty, passionate novel runs from the Depression era to the early twenty-first century.