Couples: A Novel

ISBN: 044991190X

Author: Updike, John

Condition: Used

Trapped in their cozy catacombs, the couples have made sex by turns their toy, their glue, their trauma, their therapy, their hope, their frustration, their revenge, their narcotic, their main line of communication and their sole and pitiable shield against the awareness of death.-TimeOne of The Atlantics Great American Novels of the Past 100 YearsOne of the signature novels of the American 1960s, Couples is a book that, when it debuted, scandalized the public with prose pictures of the way people live, and that today provides an engrossing epitaph to the short, happy life of the post-Pill paradise. It chronicles the interactions of ten young married couples in a seaside New England community who make a cult of sex and of themselves. The group of acquaintances form a magical circle, complete with ritualistic games, religious substitutions, a priest (Freddy Thorne), and a scapegoat (Piet Hanema). As with most American utopias, this ones existence is brief and unsustainable, but the imaginative quest that inspires its creation is eternal.Praise for CouplesCouples [is] John Updikes tour de force of extramarital wanderlust.-The New York Times Book ReviewIngenious . . . If this is a dirty book, I dont see how sex can be written about at all.-Wilfrid Sheed, The New York Times Book Review