Villages

In his 21st novel, Updike continues his examination of the post-Pill paradise. The setting is the northeastern United States; the players are educated members of the middle class; the action is centered on our protagonist's extra-marital sex life as he grows old without growing up. Sound familiar? Edward Herrmann is, as always, excellent. His readings are inevitably sensitive to the text, well paced and attention-holding; this time is no exception. In addition, his pleasant, well-rounded tenor sounds intimately of Updike's WASP milieu. He handles female voices as well as he does those of males, and his nuanced reading controls the narrative. The audiobook was produced with no breaks except for chapter numbers, which is somewhat disconcerting. Evidently, for Updike, not even an announcement of the disc number is allowed to intrude. R.E.K. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

September 6, 2004
In this 21st novel by one of the premier chroniclers of American life, a man recalls a lifetime spent in New England communities of women. Owen Mackenzie, now in his 70s and living in the small village of Haskell's Crossing, Conn., with his second wife, Julia, spends his days immersed in the daily routines of retirement while reminiscing about his childhood town of Willow, Pa., and the village where he spent his adulthood, Middle Falls, Conn. Though Owen studied at MIT and founded an early computer startup that made him moderately rich, his story is primarily defined by his romantic relationships. He marries his first wife, Phyllis, a classmate at MIT, for her cool beauty, but later decides that he needs a broader range of sexual experience. After a fraught first affair, he learns caution and is able to clandestinely indulge his love of women, until Julia, a minister's wife, comes along and convinces him to embark on a messy divorce and remarriage that indirectly results in Phyllis's accidental death. Owen's obsession with women's bodies and blithe ignorance of their inner lives can sometimes read like a tedious parody of Updike's earlier work, without a sense of humor to imply the author is in on the joke. Yet Updike still writes lovely sentences and creates a believable portrait of the American village, concealing dark secrets but providing a limited stability. 60,000
first printing; BOMC selection.