The Passions of Uxport by Maxine Kumin(Harper & Row, 19...

The Passions of Uxport by Maxine Kumin

(Harper & Row, 1968)

 

I found this book, one of a few novels written by the Pulitzer-prize winning poet Maxine Kumin, on my bookshelf and thought I would give it a go.  I'm glad I did.

The book is set in a suburb of Boston (Uxport) in 1965 and covers much of the same ground as many John Updike novels from that same period -- marital relations and infidelities in the suburbs.  Kumin's novel centers on two couples.  The wives are close friends (their friendship is somewhat based upon Kumin's intense friendship with fellow poet Anne Sexton).  While mainly focussed on one of these wives, a Jewish girl who marries a WASP because she gets pregnant in college, the book also moves fluidly and compellingly amongst many other characters, including the three remaining spouses and several townspeople, and the ancient Freudian psychoanalyst the main character consults when a pain in her abdomen persists but cannot be diagnosed, or cured.  The other wife is an artist, a painter whose fragile mental equilibrium is devastated by the sudden death of her delightful young daughter.

Kumin is a wise, generous writer, sympathetic to all her characters, and, like many poets, a beautiful and original writer of prose.  I enjoyed reading this ambitious (400 pages) and thoroughly engaging book, and felt it deserved wider acclaim and attention, as it is just as good -- or better -- than anything Updike wrote.