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26th out of 172 books
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29 voters
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Couples
by
John Updike
Couples is the book that has been assailed for its complete frankness and praised as an artful, seductive, savagely graphic portrait of love, marriage, and adultery in America. But be it damned or hailed, Couples drew back the curtain forever on sex in suburbia in the late twentieth century. A classic, it is one of those books that will be read -- and remembered -- for a l...more
Paperback, 480 pages
Published
August 27th 1996
by Random House, Inc.
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I’m honestly a bit surprised that I picked this up. To my mind it was the jejune, possibly self-caricatural big bestseller, the book whose fame caused every obituary writer to narrowly cast Updike as a chronicler of upper-middle class New England marriages (Rabbit is a Pennsylvanian petit-bourgeois, as it happens). I had heard plenty of bad reports—-from personal friends, from distantly eminent judges (Martin Amis called it a “false summit” of the Updike oeuvre). But I was at a library sale, and...more
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one reads a lot of this about updike: “it’s really well written, but…”, “the prose soars, but…”, “the writing was great, but…”
you don’t see a lot of this regarding vincent van gogh: “it’s really well painted, but…”, “the brush strokes are nice but… isn’t he just painting a flower? or some wheat? or a dirty bar?”
an imperfect analogy, but close enough. updike digests reality and spits it out with such force and kaleidoscopic beauty i’d compare his description of reality a...more
you don’t see a lot of this regarding vincent van gogh: “it’s really well painted, but…”, “the brush strokes are nice but… isn’t he just painting a flower? or some wheat? or a dirty bar?”
an imperfect analogy, but close enough. updike digests reality and spits it out with such force and kaleidoscopic beauty i’d compare his description of reality a...more
Maybe I'm an idealist when it comes to matter of the heart, romantic idiom, love and marriage, so it is hard for me to grasp the reality that some people actually live(d) as described in this book. But with an entire novel (Couples) and a good part of at least two of the Rabbit books dedicated to the scenario of partner "swapping" and "swinging," and other forms of adultery (a.k.a. cheating), I am pushed to accept that not only does this behavior exist, but that author John ...more
I love this painful book. I'm an Updike fan. He's a real pro with everything he writes, and as with all pros who do have bad outings, he does have some clunkers (Brazil, Ford Administration). But COUPLES is not one of them. The book is not the sexual romp that the blurbs and jacket copy pronounce, although there is some sex, as there always is (sometimes too much so) in Updike. But there's also the beautiful language, the very real characters, and what I admire most about this book is Updike...more
Couples by John Updike Random House Publishing, 1996
Having never read an Updike book, I had no idea what to expect. I am a particularly modest person, and to any of my friends who share this characteristic, I do not recommend reading his novels. To say the sex scenes were graphic is an understatement. What I did enjoy was how realistic and blunt his writing is. Marriage, affairs, life, and death are not sugar coated in this novel as they are in many others.
In this book ab...more
Having never read an Updike book, I had no idea what to expect. I am a particularly modest person, and to any of my friends who share this characteristic, I do not recommend reading his novels. To say the sex scenes were graphic is an understatement. What I did enjoy was how realistic and blunt his writing is. Marriage, affairs, life, and death are not sugar coated in this novel as they are in many others.
In this book ab...more
I read this book solely because it was once bestowed what I think is the most unforgettable blurb of all time: the author's wife once described it as "wading through pubic hair." Obviously, it was only a matter of time before I read Couples. Don't be like me. Don't read Couples.
Ok, now some disclaimers! This is the only Updike I've ever read (except for "Fellatio", surely The Worst Poem Ever Written, and I'm really more embarrassed for him than angry at him fo...more
Ok, now some disclaimers! This is the only Updike I've ever read (except for "Fellatio", surely The Worst Poem Ever Written, and I'm really more embarrassed for him than angry at him fo...more
Skimming a few of the other reviews on this site, I feel as though I've had a rather common reaction to this book. The language is definitely impressive. In Updike's hands, English feels infinitely supple and expressive. But reading this novel, I kept thinking, What is the *point* exactly? The story involves a group of youngish couples with small children in the early 1960s in a small Massachusetts town on the water. The primary interest to me was anthropological, assuming his portrait is s...more
What's wonderful and aggravating about Updike all in one book. We see the same recycled themes here (parts feel very much like Marry Me and the Rabbit series, among others), which isn't a bad thing. Updike loves to focus on adultery, and he does so as well as anyone I know. Some great characters here. Love the Piet storyline and all the characters involved in it. Also love the side-story about the swinging couple; really interesting stuff there that, unfortunately, he never really comes bac...more
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Interesting book about the nature of relationships. Set in a suburb of Boston over the course of a year--Spring 1963 to Spring 1964, the book follows the lives of about 8 couples in their mid-20s to mid-30s and their interlocking friendships. Published in 1968, it was scandalous for its time in that it dealt with the various affairs and infidelities that were going on amongst members of the different couples. Maybe I'm just jaded with a 2009 perspective, but the book is not really explicit an...more
I gave this book 2 stars, because like the other Updike I've read (Rabbit, Run), there is no denying that Couples is well-written. However, also like Rabbit, Run, I just didn't like it. I don't enjoy Updike's characters - I find them all completely unsympathetic. This novel seems to be about the danger of prescriptive existence in an unforgiving, unimaginative suburban town, where several (how many were there in the end, 8? 10?) couples in the early years of marriage and children, break the m...more
I picked up this book at a used book sale years ago, and it has sat expectantly on my shelf ever since. I finally gave it a shot, and overall, it left me cold. There's no doubting Updike is a gorgeously gifted writer, but nothing about the novel as a whole or the characters particularly gripped me. This is a book about the bleakness of married life, the destructive adventure of adultery, and the complicated layers of shifting power balances in sexual relationships. The characters by and large ar...more
I haven't read anything by John Updike for years so I picked up "Couples" at the library just so I could switch over to a prominent American writer for a change of pace. One of his most read books, "Couples" deals with the "new morality" that took hold amongst the young surburbanite married couples starting in the early 60's. Updike portrays this suburban culture in graphic, explicit terms, painting a picture of almost total inmorality amoung the couples of the to...more
This book tracks several couples and their infidelities. It takes place in an upper-middle class New England town in the 1960s. Once one affair becomes public, and the couples affected divorce, the collective friendship between all of the couples dissolves.
This book makes a joke out of marriage. All of the characters are morally bankrupt, and other than couples having sex with other couples, husbands cheating on wives, husbands cheating on mistresses, etc., there is really no plot...more
This book makes a joke out of marriage. All of the characters are morally bankrupt, and other than couples having sex with other couples, husbands cheating on wives, husbands cheating on mistresses, etc., there is really no plot...more
Although I am a big fan of Updike's Rabbit series and, of course, his short stories (A&P, Unstuck, etc.), this book was a disappointment. I found it too much a suburban soap opera, the characters indistinguishable from each other and the plot indiscernible. The only common thread throughout the book is a kind of childish, moral turpitude. I kept waiting for something significant to happen, but (YAWN) it never did. I guess that's suburbia in a nutshell and perhaps what Updike set out to thorou...more
Couples is a book that's beautifully written and smartly conceived, but it didn't resonate with me in the slightest. Superficially, it ought to have appealed to me as the Rabbit Angstrom novels are perhaps my favorite work of literature, but Couples lacked the urgency of a main character like Rabbit, even though Piet Hanema shares a number of traits with him.
I think my dislike for the book came from the EXTREMELY languid plotting of the first few hundred pages - Updike carefully wea...more
I think my dislike for the book came from the EXTREMELY languid plotting of the first few hundred pages - Updike carefully wea...more
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Updike’s Couples is surprisingly like the show Desperate Housewives, only much more beautifully written. Updike reveals the restless undercurrent of married life for a set of posh couples inhabiting and upper-class northern seaside town in the 60’s. As their close-knit group becomes increasingly tangled, some suffer for their infidelities while others cherish the memories to fend off the boredom that threatens them in years to come. I particularly noticed the infrequency with which these self...more
(writen 6-04)
This was the closest thing to a romance novel I have probably ever read, although I think it has literary value. I heard that when it came out it had some of the raciest scenes - I guess the public was ready though because it was a best-seller. Oh, the couples of Tarbox, with its streets ironically named Charity and Purity and Chastity, with the big church on the hill. Piet sure is a ladies' man, a trait which causes his downfall in the end. Is happiness worth two br...more
This was the closest thing to a romance novel I have probably ever read, although I think it has literary value. I heard that when it came out it had some of the raciest scenes - I guess the public was ready though because it was a best-seller. Oh, the couples of Tarbox, with its streets ironically named Charity and Purity and Chastity, with the big church on the hill. Piet sure is a ladies' man, a trait which causes his downfall in the end. Is happiness worth two br...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
This is excellent early Updike, with his trademark sinuous descriptions of bodies and minds intertwining. The assassination of JFK floats around in the backstory, as the consequences of the couples' swinging come home to roost. That said, the dialogue is hard to credit, being continually pitched at the level of the NYRB or the Late Show, despite all the swapping and betraying.
Couldn't even finish this book--and I tried pretty hard. These couples just became insufferable after a while, everyone cheating on one another and then doing nothing to make their lives what they want it to be. A bunch of miserable people complaining a lot and longing after one another--a real slog to get through.
This book is one of the reasons I'm still single. It all starts out with an affair, a married man sleeping with a married woman. When their subsequent spouses find out, they too have affairs to get even. It escalates to the point where everyone in town is essentially sleeping with everyone else, but this book is far more than a romance novel. I believe Updike was only trying to express the social decay involved when people aren't monogomous, and faithful to their spouses. At any rate, I fou...more
Becky
added it
A bit sleazy but poetically so. I love the way he writes. I started this book in 2001 but never got round to finishing it... so I feel like I have achieved something by getting it read! A bit odd to read while pregnant (because of Foxy) but I did enjoy it.
The core of this novel focuses on extra-marital relationships in an affluent New England coastal town. Adultery, taboo or accepted, is a topic that Updike is not afraid to expand upon. He has a great talent of describing an everyday occurence or making a seemingly mundane observation in a creative and entertaining manner ( i.e solar jism not sunshine).
I love Updike's description and dialogue. This book must have been scandalous in the late 1960s. It's a depiction of a town in which everyone is adulterous and sleeps with each other. Intriguing and kind of gross, too. His endings always seem to peter out for me.
Absolutely not my favorite John Updike book. Maybe he was still writing fantastically, but I really couldn't tell because of the impression I got of him drooling while reading over my shoulder. Just lewd.
Interesting to say the least. Long haul that it was with it's sometimes overdetailed prose I love the visuals Updike achieves in this story. The comparisons between parts of womens bodies and whatever variety of things he could think of to describe them was erotic and shows a man who loves women and aknowledges that women can and do love sex as mutually as men. Shows us that perhaps not prude but unsatisfied is more often the cause of a disinterested wife. I must admit I started looking at my ne...more
Perhaps this was the way you were mean't to feel but I felt like a voyeur - never really feeling part of what was going on. I just couldn't get into the characters and rarely felt fully absorbed by the prose
Clearly designed to be provocative, this book holds up well for the most part. Some of the attitudes seem dated now, but this book was considered rather groundbreaking at the time....
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John Hoyer Updike (born March 18, 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania) was an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well kn...more
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“Ken appeared, was taller than she, wanted her, was acceptable and accepted on all sides; similarly, nagging mathematical problems abruptly crack open. Foxy could find no fault with him, and this challenged her, touched off her stubborn defiant streak. She felt between his handsomeness and intelligence a contradiction that might develop into the convoluted humour of her Jew. Ken looked lika a rich boy and worked like a poor one. From Farmington, he was the only son of a Hartford laywer who never lost a case. Foxy came to imagine his birth as cool and painless, without a tear or outcry. Nothing puzzled him. There were unknowns, but no mysteries. (...) He was better-looking, better-thinking, a better machine.”
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