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S.

3.29 of 5 stars 3.29 · rating details · 686 ratings · 52 reviews

S. is the story of Sarah P. Worth, a thoroughly modern spiritual seeker who has become enamored of a Hindu mystic called the Arhat. A native New Englander, she goes west to join his ashram in Arizona, and there struggles alongside fellow sannyasins (pilgrims) in the difficult attempt to subdue ego and achieve moksha (salvation, release from illusion). “S.” details her adve...more

Paperback, 288 pages

Published August 27th 1996 by Random House Trade Paperbacks (first published 1988)

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Mar 03, 2009 brian rated it 2 of 5 stars

well, S is another entry in updike’s saga to try and figure the lengths people will go to fill the god-shaped hole. this one concerns a wealthy new england housewife who leaves it all for a hindu ashram in arizona.

unfortunately, the epistolary nature of S. causes a massive unraveling, mostly b/c the man behind the curtain is just a bit too visible. updike tries to feed the reader exposition and subtext that the writer of the letters herself ain't hip to. he further shoots himself in the foot b/...more

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Jul 26, 2007 Lena rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

S. is a novel which uses the letters and tapes of a middle-aged WASP woman to chronicle her time in a Rajneesh-style Arizona ashram. While I was intrigued by the concept, I had mixed feelings about the work. The epistolary structure offered an unusually intimate view into the main character’s world, but because S. was not a woman I found very sympathetic, her monologues didn’t speak to me personally.

This book is supposedly a satire, and I will agree that it is entertaining on that level. But I...more

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Jun 03, 2011 Stephanie rated it 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed reading S., by John Updike. This epistolary novel is written by Sarah Price Worth, who is a descendent of Hester Prynne on Sarah's mother's side. Sarah is -- save for Hester's little indiscretion, which of course may well be the most prestigious part of her heritage -- of really impeccable New England Puritan descent, wealthy, cultured, intelligent, and unhappily married to Charles, whom her parents had deemed a suitable spouse. Sarah is also mother to her daughter, the lovely,...more I really enjoyed reading S., by John Updike. This epistolary novel is written by Sarah Price Worth, who is a descendent of Hester Prynne on Sarah's mother's side. Sarah is -- save for Hester's little indiscretion, which of course may well be the most prestigious part of her heritage -- of really impeccable New England Puritan descent, wealthy, cultured, intelligent, and unhappily married to Charles, whom her parents had deemed a suitable spouse. Sarah is also mother to her daughter, the lovely, brilliant, and headstrong Pearl, just off for her junior year abroad at Oxford. When the book opens, Sarah has just left her husband to join an ashram in the Arizona desert, loosely based by Mr. Updike on the Rajneesh commune that briefly thrived and then burnt out in Antelope, Oregon, in the mid-1980s.

This novel, thankfully, is one of Mr. Updike's lighter ones. No-one dies, no terrible things happen, and the book is quite piercingly funny. One of the joys of reading Sarah's letters is the fun that comes with seeing, first, how Sarah's own perceptions change as time passes in the ashram, and second, how her tone changes and whether she chooses to conceal or reveal truths depending on the identity of the recipient of the letter in question. When the book ends, there is resolution, of a sort, though I'm not sure that Sarah managed much enlightenment when she was in the ashram.

What remains puzzling to me are all of the Scarlet Letter references. Sarah signs her letters to her husband "S.", which, is, of course a single letter and forces us, purely because of the references to Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel,to compare it to Hester's "A" and ask what the letter stands for. Slut? Mayhaps; Sarah has several relationships while at the ashram. Then there is the fact that Sarah is a descendent of Hester Prynne and chose to name her daughter "Pearl," just as Hester named her daughter. And Sarah's husband's name -- Charles Worth -- is similar enough to Roger Chillingsworth that we know it is not coincidental. And the ashram's leader's real name turns out to be "Arthur," again, clearly a reference to Hawthorne's Arthur Dimmesdale. Finally, the plot is, if you paint things in very broad strokes, very loosely similar to the Scarlet Letter's. Ah, well, I'll just have to remain puzzled for a while, I guess. Wikipedia states that Updike wrote a "Scarlet Letter" trilogy: including A Month of Sundays, which I read a long time ago, Roger's Version, which I haven't, and this book. I think more reading is in order. (less)

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May 31, 2011 Christy Murphy rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is the first time I've read any of Updike's work. I had very high expectations. Despite it being well-written and having so much "to say" (if you know what I mean), I actually found myself annoyed while reading it. Is it a good book? Absolutely. One of my criteria for a book or movie or any kind of art being worthwhile is that it really gets into my mind, and I have a lot of feelings and thoughts about the ideas presented and the choices of the characters. ABSOLUTELY! This book definitely a...more

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Apr 27, 2013 Denis Materna rated it 4 of 5 stars

A class act.

This is the second Updike book which I feel having reached the end that, I could read it again, because there's a lot of detail that I've missed, that I could actually learn something from. Toward the End of Time is the other one which I love completely and devotionally and will one day re-read.

Both books incidentally are written from an intensely personal point of view, this one being a series of letters, and tapes written by Sarah (S). "Toward the End of Time" is supposedly a diar...more

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Feb 17, 2009 Barbara rated it 4 of 5 stars

I hadn't read a John Updike book. I grew up in Reading, PA, where he is local claim to fame, and I think at some point I must have watched the movie "Rabbit, Run". but there are a lot of books out there and Updike slipped through the cracks.
When he died, I panicked! Anyway, "S." was the book on the shelf at the library. I could have waited and ordered "Rabbit, Run", but, I was frantic. I grabbed it, and started reading.
I normally read with a dictionary, or my computer set to Dictionary.com. I re...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Al added it

S. is Sarah Worth – doctor's wife, North Shore matron, loving mother, and now (suddenly!) ardent follower of a Hindu religious leader known as the Arhat. As this brilliant and very funny novel opens, Sarah is fleeing the confinement of her suburban life to become a sannyasin (pilgrim) at her guru's Arizona ashram. In the letters and audiocassettes that Sarah sends to her husband, daughter, mother, brother, best friend – to her psychiatrist and her hairdresser and her dentist – master novelist Jo

...more

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Feb 13, 2012 Emer Tannam rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is about a woman who has been a perfect wife to a perfect husband for over twenty years, and then abandons her life to move to a Buddhist religious community on the other side of the country.. The story is told through her letters to various people, including her husband and daughter. She is a wonderful character, at times silly, spiteful and ridiculous, and at others clear, sensible and profound. She ruminates on the upkeep of her abandoned garden, her childhood, her mother's excessiv...more

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Mar 21, 2011 Peter H. Fogtdal rated it 5 of 5 stars

John Updike's novel is a brilliant, sometimes hilarious novel about a suburban woman who joins a Buddhist/Hindu sect in the Arizonian desert.

Even though I'm writing a novel myself about a man's relationship to his Indian guru (almost finished), I'd never heard of this book. But I can recommend it wholeheartedly. The prose is exceptional, the satire is spot on but a little predictable - my only criticism of this masterly written novel. However, Updike pulls it all together in the end for a very...more

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Jul 28, 2011 Amanda rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historic-fiction, feminism, standalone

This epistolary novel exploring the experiences of a North Shore housewife who one day in 1986 runs off to Arizona to join a commune/cult in Arizona starts out strong, but unfortunately falls flat at the end. Whereas at the beginning we are rooting for Sarah and curious about her past and current lives, by the end she becomes unsympathetic, and her actions are a bit difficult to decipher from the letters. I was left completely uncertain if this was meant to be a book sympathetic to women or demo...more

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Feb 20, 2009 Leslie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Of course, the writing is brilliant and wickedly funny. The main character, Sarah, is extremely well-rounded--full of contradictions--although I found myself annoyed with Updike for making her seem foolish and for making me want to kick some sense into her, but to also side with her against every class convention she's turning against (except when upholding those very same conventions - making sure Mother doesn't leave the family silver in the Florida humidity, for example). Fun read apart from...more

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Aug 26, 2012 Ivan Labayne rated it 2 of 5 stars

This one is supposed to be fun, because there is a bit of form-twisting, and no further reason. In immediate second thought, I realize the easy downsides overrule the supposed lovely expectations. The biggest theme is hackneyed -- the quest for one's purpose, one's "worth" (also the surname of the protagonist, Sarah); there is dullness in narration because this is first-person, and of all possible kinds of first-person narrators, we had a suspiciously deranged woman talking about her failed marr...more This one is supposed to be fun, because there is a bit of form-twisting, and no further reason. In immediate second thought, I realize the easy downsides overrule the supposed lovely expectations. The biggest theme is hackneyed -- the quest for one's purpose, one's "worth" (also the surname of the protagonist, Sarah); there is dullness in narration because this is first-person, and of all possible kinds of first-person narrators, we had a suspiciously deranged woman talking about her failed marriage and her flee to a religious commune to redeem her shattered self.

I no longer buy the sophomoric theme of "searching of self." With all my momentary trusts on post-structuralism and reinvigorated exposure to the modernist horror, this theme should already goad an outright dismissal. But I felt like I had to give Updike a try. I remember, I turned to this after my scrumptious consumption of Franzen's Strong Motion (a sort of conscious shift from a contemporary to an older, not necessarily classical author). I like Updike's A&P and that other story of his I encountered because of my online job. The resignation of Sammy is something I can consider as the bravest moments in literature, perhaps at the level of Nora's last stance in Ibsen's A Doll House; and the ensuing bleakness and damning nebulousness, both charming and frightening, is for me one of the more memorable curtailments of a short story (I can think of Araby as one of its league, and of course, The Dead). So for this novel, I thought perhaps I should give him a chance. Remarkably, a short praise from The Philadelphia Inquirer found at the back of novel pulled me closer to the novel, part of it says, "[John Updike] is the chief chronicler of the life and times of the modern American middle class -- and perhaps its most important literary conscience."

This is the culmination of the 20th century, and the American middle class continues to be tentative and deeply anxious as ever.

S is Sarah Worth, abandoned by her husband Charles at the beginning of the novel, she sought refuge, reclamation, lasting occupation on a religious group venerating a certain Arhat, a literal living man trumpeting sometimes esoteric, sometimes ridiculous sorts of Buddhism which promises the attainment of purusha, or atman, or moksha, ultimate enlgihtenment.

What I found most interesting here is Sarah's eventual failure to submit herself to the claims (provisions) of her commune and completely wall herself away from the previous world where she was in and she now indicts as materialistic, worldly and such. When she was still a loyal Kundalini, she maintains her letter and audiocasette-sending to her family and friends in the world she has left. Eventually, she was reprimanded by the Atman for this. The mere act of sending letters to the world outside her commune is in itself telling. She has yet to break away from the life she had in that previous life. And this already tenuous tie linking her to the realm where the Atman leads, will only be fully cut short when she had disorienting experiences with the Atman in their attempt at vajrolimudra, "the yogic technique whereby semen is retained and the rajas (female secretion,lotus seed) are absorbed." Sarah felt that what was happening was no longer business, no longer according to the doctrines of the commune but already imputed with the personal motives of the Atman. And in a whiff, the collapse of faith on the collective ideals because of a single impurification from an individual -- the collective principles not merely extirpated but also rendered highly improbable by a single case of an individual defilement.

And in the end, Sarah exited the commune; and she can only appear the most heart-rendered and toyed by the amalgam of cosmic forces and her environment and her own weaknesses as she knew of Charles and her friend Midge's affair. She was peaceably resigned and dishearteningly incredulous at the same time, saying, "Charles, I can't express how serene and benign I feel about you and me. Parting is an illusion." and "it was somehow not nice to steal a woman's husband while that same woman was trustfully giving and giving herself on these tapes. (278)"

After all these fiascoes compounding and piling upon her and pairing up with her own rather skewed manner of looking at the world, we can facilely state that she had gone from bad to worse to wreck. I want to believe that Sarah had maintained her sanity and a crucial morsel of stability even after all that happened to her, with Charles and the Atman's digressions. I want to trust Updike, that he was not shallowly comforting here, showing us that in the midst of all the bustles and breaking bastions of the 20th century, there are other things aside from dementia, or mental breakdowns. Sarah had found little, or fleeting of a worth in the Hinduist commune, but we can always assert, that possibly in this life, "worth" is not always much preferred than "non-worth." (less)

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Jan 25, 2010 Sowmya rated it 5 of 5 stars

With this book I'm a fan. I read his Rabbit Trilogy and really, this is so much better as far as the way he handles his specialty of reflecting the ironies of life.
S is about a woman who joins a Hindu cult fashioned in the book to resemble OSHO, after separating from her husband, tiring of his perfidy.
The heretic spiritual leader called Arhat, seems dubious right from the start. However, Sarah is smitten, at least at first.
Through letters and foxly crafted tapes only, sent to her various frien...more

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Dec 07, 2010 Jessica rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 22, 2012 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars

This Updike novel has been sitting on my shelf for some time. I finally decided to read it, primarily because I hadn't read any Updike in a while.

The story is told in letters and tape recordings of a middle-aged New England woman who has left her husband and life to join an ashram in the Arizona desert. It is set in the 1980's. It is a humourous take, which reflects on common Updike themes of religion and sex (and their nexus). As is the case with Updike, occasionally a line really stands out as...more

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Mar 01, 2013 Matt Fendt rated it 3 of 5 stars

I liked this book. It is told as a series of one sided correspondences from the main character, who has run away from her husband to join a cult. The style was pretty unique, as I can only think of The Screwtape Letters as doing something similar. It is a story about a woman who is looking to fill the emptiness of her life. She is pretty unlikeable as very petty and mean, so that can be a turnoff for people I think. The book is also written in stream of consciousness which can result in pages lo...more

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Aug 31, 2010 Anne Van rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A very funny novel of a WASPy New England's doctor's wife who takes off to an Arizona ashram. Told entirely in letters and cassette tapes to her husband, daughter, mother, shrink, dentist, etc., this book really captures the main character's voice, lampoons the Bhogwan era, and the early 1980's.

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Aug 10, 2009 Amar rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-novels

Reminds me of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening". Sarah, a 42 year old housewife trapped in an unhealthy marriage decides to leave her husband to join a spiritual yogic community led by the Arhat, an Indian spiritual leader.

I found this novel interesting from a number of different standpoints. All the writing is done in the form of letters and dictated tapes -- there is no narration. I find this an extremely interesting way of telling a story and Updike makes it work very well. I'm also a sucker for...more

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May 14, 2009 Sean rated it 3 of 5 stars

"It's really not wise for married people (or lovers) to understand each other too well--communication, I fear, is hideously overrated"

S. has a unique narrative structure that I found both intriguing and frustratingly limiting. Overall I enjoyed it.

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Nov 19, 2012 Tim Petersik rated it 4 of 5 stars

Not Updike's best, but even his less-than-best is well worth the read. This is a mostly humorous story of how members of the privileged classes seek meaning through passing religious fanaticism. It's fun if you like Updike. I do.

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Jun 24, 2012 Marion Hill rated it 2 of 5 stars

This was my first John Updike novel. It was okay...but I didn't like the main character. She was too self-absorbed for my taste. Updike writes beautifully. But, this will probably be my first and last Updike book.

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May 02, 2008 hanna rated it 3 of 5 stars

Much better than the other Updike I've read. Still a lot of annoying white-collar East Coast society classist bullshit that's not really being mocked the way everything else is, and considering Updike is from New England, went to Harvard, and currently lives on a ranch in Massachusetts, I'm guessing here shares that New England poshness of John Irving's which I doesn't quite agree with me. I sort of feel like this book sort of moves in circles...I don't know. The characters were all pretty annoy...more

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Aug 11, 2011 Jennifer rated it 1 of 5 stars

I guess I just didn't get it. S is basically a woman writing letters about a spiritual journey that seems to have no point. It's her prattling on for page after page after page. Awful.

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Sep 30, 2012 Marlowe01247 rated it 5 of 5 stars

In the middle of this book right now. It is a very witty satire. The writing is excellent, although it is obvious that this was a draft awaiting his final edits.

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Feb 17, 2012 Suzanne rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm not usually a fan of novels written in letters. In this case, the letters were very well written & very detailed so the story was easy to follow. Very interesting story of a 40ish wife who leaves her husband to stay in an Ashram in Arizona, told through her correspondence.

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Aug 23, 2009 Daddio rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: thought-provoking, political

Very witty
The ending is too funny.

Women re-inventing themselves, in the set with;
Drinking the Rain & the Ladder of Years

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Feb 02, 2010 Linda Branham Greenwell rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

This book is an extraordinarily literate account of feminism, religion and yuppieness.

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Nov 05, 2009 Karen rated it 1 of 5 stars

I have to say no other acclaimed author has rubbed me the wrong way like John Updike has.

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Mar 17, 2009 M rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Good solid book. Really enjoyed it, witty and yet painfully close to home.

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May 10, 2009 Greg of A2 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-general

Some critics called this book an anti-feminist author's attempt at writing a feminist character - Sarah (S). Bull-pucky. This is just pure satire using the bizarre 1980's "drop out and join a cult fad" as the backdrop. A playful and sly Updike at work and it's a very humorous read.

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About John Updike

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 known for hi...more

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