Couples: A Novel

Written by John Updike

Narrated by Ari Fliakos

The provocative novel about sex in suburbia, striking in its complete sexual frankness and rightly praised as an artful, seductive, savagely graphic portrayal of love, marriage and adultery in America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Feb 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9780593150061

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 Couples

[starbox_2 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

John Updike sure can write!!
By sally tarbox on 14 April 2018
Format: Kindle Edition
This is the most amazing read; set in a middle-class New England town in the 60s, the couples are married, most with kids; they socialize,live their daily lives and get caught up in liaisons.
This is emphatically not a book to lend your mother, it's outspoken and based around sex, yet it's far from being a shallow, raunchy read. The characters are believable - we might disapprove of their actions but we get their motivations. And while at one point I was thinking "oh, no more!", you have to read it through to the end, the denouement, the ripples from it; the jealousies, broken friendships...
As our adulterous, charming lead character, building contractor (and church-goer) Piet Hanema observes: "God is not mocked."
Despite what you think as you read it, ultimately a moral message; fantastic writing.

[maneekuhi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

John Updike, author of "Couples" died from cancer in 2009 at the age of 76. He never won the Nobel Prize for literature but many critics and writers felt he should have. He wrote 21 novels, including the four famed "Rabbit" books, as well as poems, short stories, essays, children's books, a play and a memoir.


"Couples" was written in 1968; the 458 page story takes place in the early 60's in the fictional community of Tarbox, somewhere outside Boston. Tarbox is a community of 30-something couples, coupling with each others' spouses, not exactly "wife-swapping", nor is the word "swinging" precise. Some characters used the term "adultery", while others were more comfortable with "affairs". There were a lot of affairs, lots of coupling and uncoupling with each other but generally everybody was rather north-easternly civil about it; virtually no punches nor naughty words are thrown. Nor were there whips nor sex toys nor legal abortions - this was the early 60s. While there are about a dozen couples who pop up from time to time, going to dinners, cocktail parties, ski events, etc. "Couples" focuses mainly on a half dozen or so of them.


This was a very racy story for its time, and contrary to some reader reviews still racy for 2017; it's sex scenes are often lengthy and detailed though without being grotesquely graphic. And the writing is just excellent. In the background, Updike reminds us of the political and social upheavals of the day - the Cuba crisis, the Assassination, women's evolving role in the workplace, the Viet Nam war.


Though the book is about couples, it is not a romance. You don't see the word "love" much at all; there are no heroes. There are lots of community flaws exposed - it's about married life, it's about relationships, it's about sex, it's about the 60s. Highly recommended.

[jkdavies · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

suffocating, disturbing, funny in places; but ultimately empty and the pacing drops away in the last third of the book, after things between Foxy Whitman & Piet Hanema come to a conclusion, it's all meandering about from there.

[auntieknickers · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For me, Updike is one of those writers whose artistry I can appreciate, but whose subject matter tends to depress me, so I've only read 3 or 4 of his books. I recall this one as being pretty much a downer, but it did hold my interest.

[alexrichman_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Just as the seemingly endless cast of couples begins to make sense in the reader's mind, they all start swapping partners. Bizarre caricature characters populate the perfectly believable town of Tarbox - but don't go hoping for a Sodom-style smiting.

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Gee, were things really like this in the 1960s? No wonder the 'women's liberation' movement began with so much energy and anger and books like Marilyn French's "The Women's Room" changed so many lives (mine included).

This story of a bunch of couples living in the New England region of the USA was painful for me to read in some parts because it reminded me of my own earlier years (although lived around ten years later than the setting of this novel). It's a story of male dominance and female (largely 'willing') submission. Sex drives the men and they don't seem to understand, or wish to understand, why they do it, just as they might go to church without any perceptible impact on their life, except perhaps a vague feeling of nostalgia when the church burns down after a lightning strike. Having sex with lots of women in the group of couples is not a problem unless the woman gets pregnant *and* your paternity is discovered. This isn't much of a problem because this time is one in which the newly marketed contraceptive pill is releasing *men* from that fear.

I'm not sure what Updike wants us to make of this story. I'm going to read another of his books ("Rabbit, Run") before I pass judgment...and maybe the others in the "Rabbit" series which won Pulitzer Prizes.

[jburlinson_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

At the end, the local church is struck by lightning. A judgment on wife swapping and cunnilingus? Or simply divine displeasure with the the marriage of portentousness with fecklessness?

[hazelk_9 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was disappointed by this novel as had really admired Updike's Rabbit trilogy. I found myself bored by these couples and their fornications:perhaps I wouldn't have had this reaction when I was younger and then would have got a kick out of the more graphic descriptions of the sexual act. I realise that Updike may have meant us to be critical of these self-regarding people but in the end I got bored with them as they seemed to have felt bored with each other. Lost souls?

[kylekatz · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Updike is a strange old coot. I think his writing has these weird flashes of brilliance interrupted by flashy, show-off-y styling, and galling sexism. I kind of enjoy seeing how far he can go. Okay, I've only read Couples, so my statement is made based on a sample of one book.

The review of The Terrorist in The Nation has this enlightening quote: "Updike [...] cannot introduce a woman without extending the same courtesy to her breasts." I have to admit that his over the top sexuality is part of what I like about him. Why pretend that he doesn't notice the boobs as much as he does? It is a bit laughable the way he describes women and men in Couples.

[binniebee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed reading this book but I couldn't feel any sympathy for the characters!

[raphaelmatto · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Extremely good. Insiteful in a mean way about marriage. Huge round characters with magnified faults. Earthy -- as in \"I am a powerful man.\" Can\'t stand the ending.