Of the Farm

Rating:
Summary: Praise for Updike's terse psycho-drama
Review: "Of the Farm" commands one's intuition, piques one's curiosity for the following line, and is nonetheless 'beach' appropriate. This is a great casual thriller.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Not Updike's best effort

Rating:
Summary: Rural Oedipus
Review: This is a very short novel, perhaps novella would be a better description, in which Joey takes his second wife Peggy and his stepson Richard to visit his family's farm. The farm's sole occupant is Joey's ageing (and ailing) mother, Mary.

Updike explores the tensions that emerge within families with his usual acute eye. Joey is forced to confront his past, not least the failure of his first marriage, not only through the physical environment which stimulates his memory, but also by his feisty mother. Here, there is a complex mother-son relationship, one which Updike reveals slowly. How much did it contribute towards the decline of Joey's first marriage? Does his second marriage stand a better chance? Is the nascent relationship between Mary and Richard an echo of Mary's relationship with the child Joey?

I thought that this was a sensitive and thoughtful work, its brevity being a disappointment.