Following the publication of the novelist’s letters, we count down the best of his books, from the dark magic of The Witches of Eastwick to the misadventures of Rabbit Angstrom
Inspired by and drawing on three British novels (HG Wells’s The Time Machine, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Henry Green’s Concluding), Updike’s debut imagines a near future where the residents of a care home stage a revolt in which two antagonists, John Hook and Stephen Conner, struggle for supremacy. A curio.
Updike tropes Religion, death
Over the course of a single day, 79-year-old painter Hope Chafetz endures the determined attention of Kathryn D’Angelo, a young, ambitious art journalist. Updike had by this point been on the receiving end of many such encounters and the novel, told almost entirely from Hope’s perspective, bristles with resentment at the presumptions and blind spots inherent in the situation.
Updike tropes Art, religion
