Couples: A Novel

John Updike, author of "Couples" died from cancer in 2009 at the age of 76. He never won the Nobel Prize for literature but many critics and writers felt he should have. He wrote 21 novels, including the four in his famed "Rabbit" series, as well as poems, short stories, essays, children's books, a play and a memoir."Couples" was written in 1968; the 458 page story takes place in the early 60's in the fictional community of Tarbox, somewhere outside Boston. Tarbox is a community of 30-something couples, coupling with each others' spouses, not exactly "wife-swapping", nor is the word "swinging" precise. Some characters used the term "adultery", while others were more comfortable with "affairs". There were a lot of affairs, lots of coupling and uncoupling with each other but generally everybody was rather north-easternly civil about it; virtually no punches nor naughty words are thrown. Nor were there whips nor sex toys nor legal abortions - this was the early 60s. While there are about a dozen couples who pop up from time to time, going to dinners, cocktail parties, ski events, etc. "Couples" focuses mainly on a half dozen or so of them.This was a very racy story for its time, and contrary to some reader reviews still racy for 2017; it's sex scenes are often lengthy and detailed though without being grotesquely graphic. And the writing is just excellent. In the background, Updike reminds us of the political and social upheavals of the day - the Cuba crisis, the Assassination, women's evolving role in the workplace, the Viet Nam war.Though the book is about couples, it is not a romance. You don't see the word "love" much at all; there are no heroes. There are lots of community flaws exposed - it's about married life, it's about relationships, it's about sex, it's about the 60s. Highly recommended.

I was swept away by the fine writing and scene setting in this novel, but by the second half I was pretty tired of the relationships and infidelities of these people.

Really sad narrative of the way we lived then. Husbands just did not fall into other wives beds that way.The story was hard to follow in that the narrative kept switching personalities with out any notice. Very confusing to follow. Very frustrating to read as well. The long descriptive smells and sights did not seem to add much to the story.I read this book because it was on the list of books that were most popular during my young married years. At the time, I was too busy raising children to have time to read. I am glad I did not waste my time reading it then and wish I had not read it this year either.

My heading indicates my noting that this excellent novel by the great writer John Updike has a bit of a misleading title. While the characters are introduced in turn as members of their respective marriages, the narrative is propelled really by frequent uncoupling and re-couplings, if you will. The situation described is in many ways a product of Updike's virtually autobiographical approach to using material in his fiction, although the word virtually is an obvious modifier here. Those familiar with Updike's work will recognize and not be surprised by this, and the recent Begley biography on Updike makes a good case for how how much of Couples is based on his personal experiences living in Ipswich, Massachusetts, after Updike chose to leave New York City, quite intentionally so, for the suburban life just outside of Boston. Perhaps Updike anticipated that such a move would lead to this kind of book.But of course the specific social circumstances from which so much of Couples's material comes from would lkely not have been anticipated by Updike. The book literally explains not only what those specifics were, but also offers some explanations for why they were. For example the characters in teh story were described as really people who had moved to Tarbox, the fictional name for Ipswich. This distanced them from those born and bred locally, as well as how their roughly equivalent ages did from others. Along with the age equivalence came similar domestic situations with children as well as placing them in generally the same economic class, here the educated upper middle, with some exceptions. Yet the specifics, while providing details, and the time setting of the novel, will explain some of the goings on (for example the newness of use of the birth control pill seemed to create a social moment where some of the more obvious and brutal results of adultery could be avoided, while the long term effects of increased divorce rates and damage to children were not yet evident), Couples also speaks to the post modern condition more generally.this is not a work of fiction heavy on or even centered around what plot there is, but it would be an overstatement to say there is no plot. Central to the work is the effect of adultery and its related considerations, such as love, sexual satisfaction, moral purpose, how we are with others, on the Hanema marriage. Only at the very end do we find out what the net effect is, meaning whether the marriage survives or not. But there are a number of other subplots and story lines.While Updike does speak from inside a number of characters, including several of the women, the main character is Piet Hanema, a second generation Dutchman (thereby explaining the name). Updike's own family background was Dutch, and no doubt much of what we read of his thoughts, and apparently even actions, come from Updike. But at the same time Piet is not Updike, instead serving as a kind of alter ego, much as Harry Angstrom did in the Rabbit novels.Piet, but not only Piet, addresses many of the themes frequently found in Updike's work. His character's relation to their times, the connection between religion, thoughts and feelings about God, and the moral aspects of life, the effect of sex and love on people both individually and in relationships, intergenerational considerations (here sometimes most touched upon by what is NOT going on between parents and children), the effects such mundane considerations as the day to day pursuit of work and leisure have on us. In that respect Couples is very much in the nature of a "typical" Updike novel, but I think in a very good way.Updike is noted for his steady focus on the real, and Couples is an excellent example of Updike's ability to portray the world in which his characters live as well as their thoughts, feelings and experiences. In reading this book one becomes aware, again if not your first Updike novel, of the persuasiveness of his approach showing how such details can underscore and make real to the reader the examination of the thematic aspects of his work.As a word of caution, I feel compelled to advise that the overall experience is not one of uplift. Updike is hardly a feel good writer. But I was sad to come to the end of the book. One of his longer ones, the novel reminded me to some extent of some of the mostly English nineteenth century long novels, such as by Trollope, where one inhabits a fictional world each time you pick up the book with characters who you come to know. Perhaps here we do not come to love the characters as much as in Trollope, but neither do we hate, or even condemn, them.In short i highly recommend this excellent work, which for all its ties to the early sixties in an American suburb, speaks to the timelessness in the human condition.

This is a great book by Updike, delving into the emotions and personalities of a group of married couples in JFK era New England. Like most great literature, the subject is timeless, and deserves the attention of a new reading generation, as well as a re-read from those readers who remember when it was considered shocking and edgy. It still is. I wanted to read this on my Kindle, but I gave the item 4 stars because the digital reproduction is poor. Sentences are often repeated, and sometimes left out. The book is so good, I suffered through it anyway. Hope Amazon corrects this, because this book shouldn't be missed.

It may well be a good book but printing errors make it unreadable. Shame on me for waiting a year to read the book. I can't find a way for Amazon to replace book with a legible copy.

This book in the light of today’s America is just a reading of something what we can envy and sadly remember as the best time of our lives.

Muy bueno. Ha sido una re lectura y no ha pasado el tiempo por el. Lo recomiendo a todos los que estén interesados en como funciona la sociedad media americana.

458 pages full of great language, convincing characters (one first has to get a grip of, I admit) and story lines, plus all types of emotional shades including wonderful cynism, so that this book doesn't get even close to boring at any point. Everyone can recognize and identify with both the described feelings, desillusions, hopes, dreams, and disappointments, long relationships and/or adulthood brings along, as well as with the insights into life of a little town. The end is just as clean and simple and perfect as the rest of the story. A true pleasure to read.

I read this book many times. Every time I read it, I find something new. What's bonding a couple, and what's unbonding a couple. In the first few reads a few years back, I was kind of being offended by Piet, one of the leading characters among the cast thereof, however slightly or not so slightly. For every person who is in love, wanting to be, or about to falling in, the book is a must read.

The novel is set in a promiscuous, heavy drinking and well-off circle of young married friends in the fictional sea-side Boston suburb of Tarbox. The novel takes place in 1963 around the time of the assassination of JFK.'Welcome to the post-pill paradise....' These intentionally ironical words occur many times in Couples and give a clue to the central theme of the book. How do these young, mostly highly educated and well-to-do thirty something couples, deal with the opportunities that a new world of risk-free contraception and a more open attitude to sex offer for the first time, here in 1960's America. They have wealth, time, opportunity and the desire to experiment. Do they, the novel asks, find themselves in paradise or a kind of hell in which all previous moral absolutes have gone ?The 8 or 9 couples live close-knit lives, sharing holidays, parties, school runs and frequently, sexual partners. Their master of ceremonies, the odious dentist Freddie, encourages this sexual freedom in which he takes virtually no part. Piet Hanema, the central male character, is an inveterate womaniser and interestingly, the only non-academic in the group, he is a carpenter. He also remains friends with all his previous partners as he is attractive and undemanding. His transgressive relationship with the heavily pregnant Foxy Whitworth causes deep rifts and disquiet in the group. Hedonistic freedom comes, Updike makes it clear, with a heavy price and Piet and Foxy pay.The writing is wonderful. Updike at his clear, passionate and insightful best leads us deep into the lives of his characters through his way of writing from the inside out. We feel, see and experience life as lived by those characters in that time and place.Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike has become most famous as a "chronicler of suburban adultery". A subject which, he once wrote, "if I have not exhausted, has exhausted me." There is no sign of exhaustion in this early novel though, He writes honestly, with fire in his belly and out of anger, deep disgust as well as a desire to explain and to understand.