Of the Farm: A Novel

By John Updike

“A small masterpiece . . . With Of the Farm, John Updike has achieved a sureness of touch, a suppleness of style, and a subtlety of vision that is gained by few writers of fi ction.”—The New York Times

In this short novel, Joey Robinson, a thirty-five-year-old New Yorker, describes a visit he makes, with his second wife and eleven-year-old stepson, to the Pennsylvania farm where he grew up and where his aging mother now lives alone. For three days, a quartet of voices explores the air, making confessions, seeking alignments, quarreling, pleading, and pardoning. They are not entirely alone: ghosts (fathers, lovers, children) press upon them, as do phantoms from the near future (nurses, lawyers, land developers). Of the Farm concerns the places people choose to live their lives, and the strategies they use to stand their ground.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9780679645757

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 Of the Farm

[starbox_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Very autobiographical novel, based on Updike's own mother, her much loved farm, and the difficult relationship that ensues as , after leaving his wife and children, he visits her with his second wife and stepson. There are so many strands running through it - the mother's awareness of her age and infirmity; the sense of loss as she fears never seeing her grandchildren again; her bitterness at seeing her adored son taking up with someone she deems stupid (and his own qualms that she may be right.) Great piece of writing.

[ghost_boy-691444 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Quick read. Not one of Updike's best, but I still liked this one. Like other's have pointed out, their isn't much of a plot, however there is a lot of good characters and dialogue. I thought this would have worked as a play too.