Justin Cartwright

The coven reconvenes

The Widows of Eastwick, by John Updike<br /> <br type="_moz" />

The Widows of Eastwick, by John Updike

The Witches of Eastwick was published in 1984; it was a retrospective cele- bration of the new sexual liberties and powers available to women in the 1960s. The book aroused interest both by its unexpected boldness of design and by its frankness and it became a successful movie. Three young women, all living in Eastwick, Alexandra Spofford, Jane Smart and Sukie Rougemont, abandoned their husbands and neglected their children in favour of a more louche life with a charming scoundrel called Darryl Van Horne. In his house, the Lennox Mansion, Van Horne dabbled in magic and involved the women in his pot-smoking, hot-tub shenanigans, diabolism and sexual experimentation. When he was exposed as a penniless conman and it was rumoured that they had killed Jenny Gabriel, whom Van Horne married, much to their chagrin, the women were ostracised, following the pattern of the witches of Puritan New England, and made a hasty exit. They half believed they had indeed killed Jenny with their do-it-yourself magic.

When The Widows of Eastwick, which appears to be set in about 2000, opens, the three women are all widowed and only occasionally in touch. Alexandra, who is at the centre of the story, is living in Taos, New Mexico, left with very little money after her second husband, a potter, died. The other two live in eastern America. Jane is wealthy, but has to share the family house with a 100-year-old mother-in-law, and Sukie is writing pretty awful pulp romances, of which Upike does a wonderful pastiche. Eventually, after some over-long accounts of travels that smack of thrifty recycling of the Updike family holidays, the women decide to meet up again to spend the summer in Eastwick.

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