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A review by richardrbecker
Couples by John Updike
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Couples is one of those books that will feel alien to most readers today, especially younger ones. Published in 1968 and set in the early 1960s, it captures suburbia that would be unrecognizable today — a time when America was entering an era of free love and swingers with the advent of birth control and decades before the threat of AIDs and other more permanent STDs. As such, it's a time capsule.
Affairs, swaps, flings, and their consequences drive the novel despite some passing observations of more historical events, such as the Kennedy assassination. The story is told through the relationships of ten couples who live in Tarbox, Massachusetts, with Piet Hanema controlling much of it. He has one affair after another until one err in judgment and promises to give a community that embraced the 60s as a means to escape the pressures of Protestant sexual mores set in the 1950s.
Along with its characters within the novel, Updike's treatment of sex takes advantage of another awakening toward the end of the 1960s when real and raw writing paralleled a maturing sexual revolution. But like the 1970s that would follow, the novel also holds its participants as slaves to an older conscience, leaving them to deal with guilt and survival sadness. And therein lies the juxtaposition. Couples simultaneously celebrates and punishes its cast of characters. It is both real and raw, and although it feels longer than it needs to be, it demonstrates the power and prowess of its author, especially his ability to capture culture in its moment. It's not a favorite, but five stars nonetheless.
Affairs, swaps, flings, and their consequences drive the novel despite some passing observations of more historical events, such as the Kennedy assassination. The story is told through the relationships of ten couples who live in Tarbox, Massachusetts, with Piet Hanema controlling much of it. He has one affair after another until one err in judgment and promises to give a community that embraced the 60s as a means to escape the pressures of Protestant sexual mores set in the 1950s.
Along with its characters within the novel, Updike's treatment of sex takes advantage of another awakening toward the end of the 1960s when real and raw writing paralleled a maturing sexual revolution. But like the 1970s that would follow, the novel also holds its participants as slaves to an older conscience, leaving them to deal with guilt and survival sadness. And therein lies the juxtaposition. Couples simultaneously celebrates and punishes its cast of characters. It is both real and raw, and although it feels longer than it needs to be, it demonstrates the power and prowess of its author, especially his ability to capture culture in its moment. It's not a favorite, but five stars nonetheless.