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.
Read More
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.
Read Less
Add this copy of Couples to cart. $1.39, good condition, Sold by New & Olde Pages rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Englewood, OH, UNITED STATES, published 1982 by Fawcett Books.
Add this copy of Couples to cart. $2.29, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 1985 by Fawcett Books.
Add this copy of Couples to cart. $2.29, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Baltimore rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Halethorpe, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1985 by Fawcett Books.
Add this copy of Couples to cart. $2.29, fair condition, Sold by Orion Tech rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Arlington, TX, UNITED STATES, published 1985 by Fawcett.
Add this copy of Couples: a Novel to cart. $2.34, good condition, Sold by Books For Life rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Laurel, MD, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by Random House Publishing Group.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Book is in good condition. Minimal signs of wear. It May have markings or highlights but kept to only a few pages. May not come with supplemental materials if applicable.
Add this copy of Couples to cart. $2.61, very good condition, Sold by HPB-Movies rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 1985 by Fawcett.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Add this copy of Couples to cart. $2.61, very good condition, Sold by Half Price Books Inc rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 1985 by Fawcett.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Very good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!
Add this copy of Couples to cart. $2.81, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Atlanta rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Austell, GA, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by Random House Publishing Group.
Add this copy of Couples to cart. $2.81, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Reno rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Reno, NV, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by Random House Publishing Group.
Add this copy of Couples to cart. $2.81, good condition, Sold by ThriftBooks-Dallas rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Dallas, TX, UNITED STATES, published 1996 by Random House Publishing Group.
John Updike once said that the thesis of his 1968 novel is that "sex is the emergent religion," and that point is rather heavy-handedly dramatized with the symbolic conflagration of the small New England town's church at the close of the novel.
Tarbox is the name of the town, and that too is overly freighted with symbolism as a place where exurban young marrieds come to settle, stall in their careers, feel a staleness in their marriages, and cannot escape.
Set in the early Sixties on the cusp of change, before and after President Kennedy's assassination, the novel does well as a tragicomedy of suburban manners--the bibulous dinner parties, the social cruelty of their parlor games, the afternoon basketball games, the neglect of children.
If the novel can be said to have a protagonist, it is Piet Hanema, a building contractor whose affairs are recounted with an astonishing scrupulosity. A critic has said that Couples is Updike's most Joycean book in its sexual candor, but it fails to measure up to the work of that modernist master, because Updike's vaunted prose style--part Flaubert, part Nabokov--falters at moments, and the novel feels airless and claustrophobic in a way Ulysses' encyclopedia capaciousness and prose parodies don't.
Updike's weakness, critic Wilfrid Sheed wrote, isn't too much beauty but "too much precision," and that seems right to me. At times in this novel, the author writes more like a clinician diagnosing a social malady than a novelist fully in love with his characters.
