The Witches of Eastwick: A Novel

Written by John Updike

Narrated by Kate Reading

“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’s 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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Oct 21, 2008
• ISBN: 9780739370827

John Updike

John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 has lived in Massachusetts. He is the author of fifty-odd previous books, including twenty novels and numerous collections of short stories, poems, and criticism. His fiction has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal.

Reviews for The Witches of Eastwick

[MonteAquino · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Reading The Witches of Eastwick has increased my meager list of movies that are BETTER than the book. Mainly because they have nothing to do with each other.
I found the movie entertaining. The witches Sarandon, Cher, and Pfeiffer are glamorous with a wicked touch, and Jack Nicholson, although aging and somewhat past his prime, is interesting and has charm.
Any resemblance to the printed characters is based on hair color, their hobbies, and little else...
They, the ones in the book, are true harpies, envious, wicked, hateful, without scruples when it comes to casting spells to break legs, poison, and slowly kill anyone who bothers them. The main victims are the wives of their lovers, young women who overshadow them...
And the author, it seems, was going through a rough time in his love life, presents two types of women basically: the witches, sexually liberated, bad mothers, evil to the core, and the wives, boring, exasperating, dull... The men are mere stone guests. They merely take up space, in bed and in the story, and are handled at the whim of one or the other. The only one who stands out, albeit not too much, is Van Horne (alias Nicholson), a mediocre being for whom the witches, jealous, go on to commit real atrocities.
I started reading it with the hope of finding the witches from the movie and having fun. The myth was destroyed for me as I progressed through the reading (heavy and convoluted), so with this novel, I say hello and goodbye to J. Updike. I will greet him casually if I run into him again in another movie. (Translated from Spanish)

[JUAN PEDRO PABLO · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Notable novel by John Updike that was adapted into a film starring a trio of extraordinary actresses: CHER, SUSAN SARANDON, and MICHELLE PFEIFFER, alongside JACK NICHOLSON. There is a second part at least in the novel, The Witches of Eastwick. I hope they make a movie of this one as well. The book is excellent. The movie is just as good. (Translated from Spanish)