The Witches of Eastwick

In a small New England town in the late 1960s, there lived three witches. Alexandra Spoffard, sculptress, could create thunderstorms. Jane Smart, a cellist, could fly. The local gossip columnist, Sukie Rougemont, could turn milk into cream.

Divorced but hardly celibate, content but always ripe for adventure, our three wonderful witches one day found themselves quite under the spell of the new man in town, Darryl Van Horne, whose hot tub was the scene of some rather bewitching delights.

To tell you any more, dear reader, would be to spoil the marvelous joy of reading this hexy, sexy novel by the incomparable John Updike.

"Fresh, constantly entertaining....The text also abounds with delightful aphorisms for these times....John Updike remains a wizard of language and observation." The Philadelphia Inquirer

"[A] wicked entertainment with lots (and lots) of sex....In book after book, Updike's fine, funny impressionistic art strips the full casings of everydayness from objects we have known all our lives and makes them shine with fresh new connections." The New Republic

"A dazzling book....A very funny and very unsettling story of what witchcraft might look like if it were around today....Updike is devilishly clever." Los Angeles Times

"Witty, ironic, engrossing, punctuated by transports of spectacular prose." Time Magazine

It's the marvelous story of three ambitious witches living in a small New England town in the late 1960s, who find themselves quite under the spell of the new man in town, Darryl Van Horne, whose hot tub is the scene of some rather bewitching delights.

Toward the end of the Vietnam era, in a snug little Rhode Island seacoast town, wonderful powers have descended upon Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie, bewitching divorcées with sudden access to all that is female, fecund, and mysterious. Alexandra, a sculptor, summons thunderstorms; Jane, a cellist, floats on the air; and Sukie, the local gossip columnist, turns milk into cream. Their happy little coven takes on new, malignant life when a dark and moneyed stranger, Darryl Van Horne, refurbishes the long-derelict Lenox mansion and invites them in to play. Thenceforth scandal flits through the darkening, crooked streets of Eastwick—and through the even darker fantasies of the town’s collective psyche.

BEFORE THEY WERE THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICK, OUR HEROINES WERE A TRIO OF DELIGHTFULLY WICKED WITCHES.

In a small New England town in that hectic era when the sixties turned into the seventies, there lived three witches. Alexandra Spoffard, a sculptress, could create thunderstorms. Jane Smart, a cellist, could fly. The local gossip columnist, Sukie Rougemont, could turn milk into cream. Divorced but hardly celibate, the wonderful witches one day found themselves quite under the spell of the new man in town, Darryl Van Horne, whose strobe-lit hot tub room became the scene of satanic pleasures.

To tell you any more, dear reader, would be to spoil the joy of reading this hexy, sexy novel by the incomparable John Updike.

Praise for New York Times Bestseller The Witches of Eastwick:

“A dazzling book . . . Updike is devilishly clever.”

-Los Angeles Times

“New Englands past and present are brilliantly interwoven in this narrative . . . [Updike] has brought [this] culture wittily and radiantly to life.”

-The New York Times

“A great deal of fun to read . . . fresh, constantly entertaining . . . John Updike [is] a wizard of language and observation.”

-The Philadelphia Inquirer

“A wicked entertainment . . . In book after book, Updikes fine, funny impressionistic art strips the full casings of everydayness from objects we have known all our lives and makes them shine with fresh new connections.”

-The New Republic

“Witty, ironic, engrossing, punctuated by transports of spectacular prose.”

-Time

“Vintage Updike, which is to say among the best fiction we have.”

-Newsday

Selected by Time as one of the Five Best Works of Fiction of the Year

John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, in 1932. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. In 2007 he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Updike died in January 2009.