Now the witches have grown old. They are widowed and fussy and plagued by the same illnesses and dread that afflict mere mortals. Do we like them? Yes. Are we pleased to find them in a sequel? Absolutely.
John Updike took a risk with this one. It has been 24 years since “The Witches of Eastwick” first landed on bookshelves, all sass and spite and sexuality, and in the interim, Mr. Updike has produced books both lauded (“Rabbit at Rest” - the final installment of the Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom quartet) and lamented (2006’s “The Terrorist”). It is tempting to say that after the disappointing reception of “The Terrorist,” Mr. Updike, the author of more than 20 novels, numerous short stories, essays and five children’s books, simply chose to return to more tried-and-true turf. But who’s to say. There is a way that the beguiling witches, Suki, Alexandra and Jane, seem to call their own shots. In the best sense, “The Widows of Eastwick” seems willed by them — for them — to reunite and face their demons.
As readers may recall, in the first book, the three witches, wives and mothers all, out of boredom, angst and failed marriages, wished for and got the man of their dreams. Only Daryl Van Horne, the man they conjured — and bedded — turned out to be the devil. When Daryl abandons them and seduces Jenny, a younger woman, the fur flies. “The Witches of Eastwick” ends with Daryl leaving town with Chris, Jenny’s brother. For their part, Suki, Alexandra and Jane each use witchcraft to summon ideal spouses with whom they leave Eastwick, presumably to start new lives.
So “The Widows of Eastwick” picks up where its predecessor ended, opening with an update on the now older witches’ whereabouts: “Those of us acquainted with their sordid and scandalous story were not surprised to hear, by way of rumors from the various localities where the sorceresses had settled after fleeing our good town of Eastwick, Rhode Island, that the husbands that the three Godforsaken women had by their dark arts concocted for themselves did not prove durable. Wicked methods make weak products. Satan counterfeits Creation, yes, but with inferior goods.”
The early pages of the book also recall details about Jenny’s fate, a subject not addressed in the wildly popular 1987 film “The Witches of Eastwick” starring Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer, with Jack Nicholson playing Daryl Van Horne. “Thirty years ago Alexandra had slain a sister witch: she and Sukie Rougemont and Jane Smart had killed little Jenny Gabriel, though the death certificate blamed metastasized malignancy of the ovaries. The curse of it was always there, inside Alexandra, even when she didn’t close her eyes, a sour gnawing.” Although, Jenny’s fate calls to mind something of original sin, there is a strong suggestion in the book that Jenny’s fate is more complicated than any of them realize.
Alexandra, the oldest of the witches, is the first readers meet in “Widows.” All past anguish aside, each has, after the death of each of their husbands, managed to make homes for themselves — Sukie in Connecticut, Jane in Massachusetts and Alexandra in New Mexico — even as they abide the loneliness of widowhood. But Alexandra, for one, is determined not to give up. “Her instinct, as with so many a wife suddenly liberated into solitude, was to travel.”
And, so the first section of the book, called “The Coven Reconstituted” proceeds with the witches reuniting and seeking places to visit. And in these early pages, readers are treated to romps through the Canadian Rockies, Egypt and China. But for the aging travelers, as travel weariness sets in, so does self-awareness. As Alexandra reminds Jane, “Jane, we’re old. Nobody wants us, except our grandchildren for the first half-hour of a visit. It’s very freeing, I find.”
So they bond, and find that when they are together some of their powers even return. By the time they visit China, they are able to make Mao wink from his portrait hanging high over Tiananmen Square.
By part two of the book, Maleficia Revisited, they resolve to return to Eastwick, but just for a summer. They are lured by “the beach, the Bay, the little shops selling kitschy watercolors and stained glass and candles on Dock Street.” And they are lured by the will to put their past behind them. But the townspeople aren’t so ready to accommodate. “News that the damnable trio were back in town percolated from ear to ear like rainwater trickling through the tunnels of an ant colony.” But they do their best to thrive, managing the return of their powers, engaging in odd rounds of spell-making and dealing with Jane’s sudden and serious illness.
By the third section of the book, “Guilt Assuaged,” all manner of reasons for going to Eastwick again are resolved. It would be unfair to give details of the resolution here, but with his elegant prose and unfailing wit, Mr. Updike wraps things up well. There is moral courage in these pages. And kindness too. One could argue that Mr. Updike, who has built a reputation chronicling suburban malaise - most adroitly from the male perspective - might not be the best person to calculate the trajectory of aging women and their despair. But by the end of the book there is no doubt that Mr. Updike just seems to get what woman want and need, and he is every bit the gentlemen guiding his readers to his — and our — discoveries.
THE WIDOWS OF EASTWICK
By John Updike
Knopf, $24.95, 303 pages
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