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Couples (Penguin Modern Classics)
 
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Couples (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)

by John Updike (Author)
3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
RRP: £9.99
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Product details

  • Paperback: 464 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Classics (22 Feb 2007)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0141188987
  • ISBN-13: 978-0141188980
  • Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 13 x 2.5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 11,557 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #8 in  Books > Fiction > 20th Century Classics > Updike, John

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Product Description

Product Description
An intoxicating yet sensitive novel about the sexual experiences of ten couples from Tarbox, New England. Well-to-do, sociable, articulate but dangerously unfulfilled; they play word games in the evening and adultery all year round.

About the Author
Born in Pennsylvania, John Updike has lived in Massachusetts since 1957 as a freelance writer. A highly successful novelist and poet, he has received the Pulitzer prize for two of his novels in the Rabbit series, Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest.

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Couples (Penguin Modern Classics)
84% buy the item featured on this page:
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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews
5 star:
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 (4)
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Average Customer Review
3.6 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars John Updike's 'Couples', 27 Jul 2002
This review is from: Couples (Paperback)
'Couples' by John Updike revolves around a circle of affluent and heartlessly adulterous young married couples in the fictional town of Tarbox, New England. Set in the early sixties, it focuses in on Piet Hanema, a building contractor who has become somewhat estranged from his small children and his ever-more frigid wife, Angela. It is then that he becomes ensnared by the newest wife in town, Foxy Whitman, who is heavily pregnant with the child of her husband Ken. Their affair continues for the length of her pregnancy,and beyond,until disaster strikes!. Piet and Foxy find themselves in desperate need of the help of their sleaziest and, perhaps, most untrustworthy friend, Freddy Thorne.
'Couples' is, at times, uncomfortable reading. Indeed, the racy and streetwise dialogue of the couples does not always compensate for their lack of character. This is not helped by Updike's graphic and unnervingly poetic descriptions of sex, which he employs quite regularly (Hanema beds five wives within the course of the novel). However, it is Updike's impressive control of language which makes 'Couples' so readable. With its somewhat trashy premise, 'Couples' could well have been confined, like so many other bestsellers, to the forgotten pile of literary history. But Updike is a special talent. Despite his numerous high-profile critics, its Updike's ability as an artist that maintains 'Couples' freshness thirty-five years after its publication. Consider it!
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars welcome to the post-pill paradise, 9 Aug 2008
The novel is set in a promiscuous, heavy drinking and well-off circle of young married friends in the fictional sea-side Boston suburb of Tarbox. The novel takes place in 1963 around the time of the assassination of JFK.

'Welcome to the post-pill paradise....'

These intentionally ironical words occur many times in Couples and give a clue to the central theme of the book. How do these young, mostly highly educated and well-to-do thirty something couples, deal with the opportunities that a new world of risk-free contraception and a more open attitude to sex offer for the first time, here in 1960's America. They have wealth, time, opportunity and the desire to experiment. Do they, the novel asks, find themselves in paradise or a kind of hell in which all previous moral absolutes have gone ?

The 8 or 9 couples live close-knit lives, sharing holidays, parties, school runs and frequently, sexual partners. Their master of ceremonies, the odious dentist Freddie, encourages this sexual freedom in which he takes virtually no part. Piet Hanema, the central male character, is an inveterate womaniser and interestingly, the only non-academic in the group, he is a carpenter. He also remains friends with all his previous partners as he is attractive and undemanding. His transgressive relationship with the heavily pregnant Foxy Whitworth causes deep rifts and disquiet in the group. Hedonistic freedom comes, Updike makes it clear, with a heavy price and Piet and Foxy pay.

The writing is wonderful. Updike at his clear, passionate and insightful best leads us deep into the lives of his characters through his way of writing from the inside out. We feel, see and experience life as lived by those characters in that time and place.

Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike has become most famous as a "chronicler of suburban adultery". A subject which, he once wrote, "if I have not exhausted, has exhausted me." There is no sign of exhaustion in this early novel though, He writes honestly, with fire in his belly and out of anger, deep disgust as well as a desire to explain and to understand.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Not his best, 13 Oct 2008
By Sizebel (London, UK) - See all my reviews
I've given this 4 stars which is a bit harsh and I should explain that I'm comparing it with Updike's other works which are mostly 6 out of 5. But Updike at cruise-control is still fantastic compared to most other authors at full throttle. Couples reprises the familiar themes of adultery, sex addiction (before there was a condition for it) and marital boredom. However, the conversations of the characters seemed unbelievable: all you could hear was Updike talking, or one of his alter egos. Some of the other characters, especially the women, just wouldn't talk like that. Unlike other Updike novels, this one took me a while to finish because I couldn't take that much of it in one sitting. If you've never experienced Updike, you'll still be pretty impressed at his writing. But I recommend you start with the Rabbit trilogy to get pure literary pleasure from this genius.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 stars hard going
read this for our book club and found it over wordy and hard going.So many varied opinions about it we decided it was like Marmite, you either love it or loathe it. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Vm Postlethwaite

2.0 out of 5 stars Uncoupled
I've never been a John Updike fan & one should'nt speak ill of a recent dead,but the huge tributes made me feel I had missed out. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Mr. K. D. Perry

4.0 out of 5 stars This book will get under your skin
John Updike's Couples is an enjoyable and demanding read. I would liken the experience of reading this novel to watching a soap opera. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Ms. Hj Dowlen

4.0 out of 5 stars Be enthralled by the lives of 20 unpleasant people
It is difficult to imagine a less appealing subject than adultery, but within a dozen pages the reader is drawn into the closely intermeshed world of the Tarbox couples. Read more
Published on 27 Aug 2000

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