Rebecca's review
Afterlife by John Updike
This was the second Updike book I read after "In the Beauty of the Lilies," and I just wasn't ready for it. A surreal, hard-to-follow glimpse into modern American society's (possible) near future, Afterlife hangs heavily on themes of exploitation (both personal and planetary), and the connection between sex and death, nature and man, God and the infinite, eternal void of space and time. This is a DARK story, sinister even. I found myself constantly questioning what was real and what was imaginary in the main character's narrative. The book presents an interesting idea: How does our perception of ourselves and our world change as we move through life? Do our compulsions and obsessions serve to drive us toward or away from certain death? How do we cling to our own physicality, matters of the flesh, as our aging minds begin to let go in anticipation of release in death?
