Revisiting the Witches ~ A Book Diary Review of ‘The Widows of Eastwick’ By John Updike Part II

While doing research for this ‘Widows of Eastwick’ project I found out that an ABC series based on the original book is set to debut in the fall called ‘Eastwick’.  It isn’t the first television show based on ‘The Witches of Eastwick’; one debuted in July of 1992 and was canceled five years after the movie became a hit.  Remember how the top networks kept thinking they could replicate the success of ‘MASH’ if only they could find the right TV slipper to fit the fickle American audience’s foot? 

Thursday, August 6

                I’m happy to report that I’m one third into the book and with this reading session it is starting to grow on me.  It isn’t so much that the storyline has picked up the pace, it is still as slow as a great grandma in her walker (the type with the torn tennis balls at the bottom) climbing up Everest, but at least my favorite (and for me the most self identifiable) character is now part of the plot; Sukie.  In fact I didn’t know how much I had missed her until I started to read about her.   

                China within their memory-span had taken various forms: a fabled land of starving children, Pearl Buck peasants, dragon ladies, rickshaws, and comic-strip pirates; a friendly democracy ably led by Chiang Kai-shek and his glamorous Soong-sister wife; a suffering victim of  vicious Japanese and a staunch ally of President Roosevelt; a post-war, Cold War filed of civil conflict wherein President Truman cannily declined to intervene and wherein the staunch Nationalists lost to the Communists; a tightly closed bastion of inimical political creed; a source of hordes of enemy “volunteers” pouring southward in Korea; a ponderous mass of robotized humanity that might swallow us if prodded at Quemoy or Matsu or Formosa; a mom of Mao-chanting Red Guards in a Cultural Revolution brutally parodying the West’s Sixties counterculture; then, after Nixon’s trip and gawky dinner toasts, an ally again, against the Soviet Union; after Mao’s death and the Gang of Four’s overthrow, a tender seedbed of budding free enterprise; after Deng Xiaoping’s triumph of pragmatism, a voracious consumer of American jobs and receiver of American dollars; and now the twenty-first century’s impending superpower, a billion three hundred million factory workers and consumers, a creditor of sagging American capitalism and competitor for the dwindling global supply of oil.  There in the airport Sukie cried in her high, faintly breathless voice, “We’re going to have such fun!”  (page 81)

                As you can see, as with Part I of my reading diary, the girls are traveling again and this time to China.  In many ways I’m enjoying and learning from the travelogue feeling of Updike’s verse.  I’m fairly sure that if I was to study his travels they would include Egypt, China, and of course the Canadian Rockies.

                One of the things that I found a bit disconcerting when I started to read ‘Widows’ was the fact that they wasn’t a preface to this book explaining what happened in the earlier story.  Granted, Updike has made statements to the previous story but the details are foggy at best for me and if I remember correctly there were some major differences between the book and movie.  As I read on I am wondering if Updike didn’t put a preface in because he didn’t necessarily want the two books to be seen as a unit, preferring that this one would be able to stand alone from its predecessor while using the same characters.  If so, thus far I think he made a wise decision.  I am currently at page 116 and I think that some of my concerns about misogyny are for naught. 

Westerfield © 2009