This penultimate novel, as always by Updike, is a subtle study of the soul and body of the average American.
This penultimate novel, as always by Updike, is a subtle study of the soul and body of the average American. This time it is written in the form of a story about the Don Juan adventures of computer specialist and businessman Owen Mackenzie, who recalls his novels in his old age. Relationships with Elsa, Faye, Stacy, Alyssa, Karen, Jacqueline, Mirabella, first and second wife seem to Owen to be a password with which he hopes to unravel the principles of the world order and the meaning of his own being. But no, this key does not open the necessary doors, and in the end, life seems to the hero only «a change of fear, desire, ambition, guilt.» The novel is permeated with a light and very Updike melancholy, enhanced by the cozy but suffocating landscapes of provincial America, in which Owen lives, changing one village for another — hence, by the way, the title.
AST, 319 p.