Ophelia Field
An Absent Mind
Villages
By John Updike
Hamish Hamilton 321pp £16.99
For a twenty-first novel – and one that includes yet more variations on John Updike’s favourite themes – Villages is not a lazy book. If someone who had never read Updike were picking it up, one might suggest they try Couples (1968) instead; however, if this same Updike virgin were to go ahead without such advice, they would not actually find any of the staleness or sloppiness in Villages that backlist-burdened critics assume to be there. Updike’s work may be at a near standstill relative to, say, that of Philip Roth, but taken in isolation, page by enjoyable page, his writing is as strong as ever.
Three villages feature in the life of the hero, Owen Mackenzie: Haskells Crossing, Massachusetts (his point of embarkation for the afterlife); Middle Falls, Connecticut (the scene of his moral descent through his middle years); and Willow, Pennsylvania (his birthplace, and ‘a child’s virtual eternity’). Events in the latter two, and especially the second, become masturbatory fodder for a life now barely lived in the first. Seventy-year-old Owen remembers his sexual history from start to near-finish, and through him Updike writes an elegy for an adulterous age.
This is, above all, a story of chronic absenteeism. People
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm