Of the Farm - Softcover

Updike, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140028447 ISBN 13: 9780140028447

Publisher: Penguin, 1980

Synopsis

The question hung in the air as Joey, his second wife, Peggy, and his quietly precocious stepson arrive to visit Joey's mother on her uncultivated farm. Over the weekend, tempers flare and Joey is forced to take stock of his past and his present - is his second marriage a terrible mistake?

About this title

Review:

"Very clearly and very completely a small masterpiece.""--The New York Times ""AN EXCELLENT BOOK . . . A PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER . . . [Updike] has the painter's eye for form, line, and color; the poet's ear for metaphor; and the storyteller's knack for 'and then what happened?' "--"Harper's ""Updike is a master of sheer elegance of form that shows itself time and again.""--Los Angeles Times ""Updike just happens to write the most vivid prose in America.""--Vanity Fair"

About the Author:

John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming from Hamish Hamilton.

His novels, stories, and non-fiction collections have won have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award and the Howells Medal.

Updike graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year at Oxford's Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of staff at the New Yorker, and he lived in Massachusetts from 1957 until his death in January 2009.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0140028447
• ISBN 13: 9780140028447
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160