| Villages Contributor(s): Updike, John (Author) |
|
 |
ISBN: 0345477316 ISBN-13: 9780345477316 Publisher: Random House Trade OUR PRICE: $14.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: September 2005 Annotation: John Updike's twenty-first novel, a bildungsroman, follows its hero, Owen Mackenzie, from his birth in the semi-rural Pennsylvania town of Willow to his retirement in the rather geriatric community of Haskells Crossing, Massachusetts. In between these two settlements comes Middle Falls, Connecticut, where Owen, an early computer programmer, founds with a partner, Ed Mervine, the successful firm of E-O Data, which is housed in an old gun factory on the Chunkaunkabaug River. Owen's education "(Bildung) is not merely technical but liberal, as the humanity of his three villages, especially that of their female citizens, works to disengage him from his youthful innocence. As a child he early felt an abyss of calamity beneath the sunny surface quotidian, yet also had a dreamlike sense of leading a charmed existence. The women of his life, including his wives, Phyllis and Julia, shed what light they can. At one juncture he reflects, "How lovely she is, naked in the dark! How little men deserve the beauty and mercy of women!" His life as a sexual being merges with the communal shelter of villages: "A village is woven of secrets, of truths better left unstated, of houses with less window than opaque wall." This delightful, witty, passionate novel runs from the Depression era to the early twenty-first century. "From the Hardcover edition. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Coming Of Age - Fiction | Family Life - General |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Physical Information: 0.76" H x 5.3" W x 8" (0.54 lbs) 336 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Mid-Atlantic - Cultural Region - New England - Demographic Orientation - Rural - Geographic Orientation - Pennsylvania |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: In this wry novel of sentimental education and sexual pursuit, we follow Owen Mackenzie, a representative man of the author's generation, from cradle to grave, and from bed to bed. His life and relationships are shaped by three villages, warm-lit communities that keep the darkness at bay from within and without. In Willow, Pennsylvania, the young Owen is transfixed by his first glimpses of female beauty. In Middle Falls, Connecticut, he marries, becomes a first-wave computer programmer, and discovers the very grownup pleasures of serial adultery. Finally, married for a second time, he retires with his memories, illusions, and fantasies to the somewhat geriatric community of Haskells Crossing, Massachusetts. John Updike turns Owen's personal odyssey into a radiant, sensual fable of the seasons of a man's life--and of the getting of wisdom in America. |