Of the Farm recounts Joey Robinson's visit to the farm where he grew up and where his mother now lives alone. Accompanied by his newly acquired second wife, Peggy, and an eleven-year-old stepson, Joey spends three days reassessing and evaluating the course his life has run. But for Joey and Peggy, the delicate balance of love and sex is threatened by a dangerous new awareness.
Read More
Of the Farm recounts Joey Robinson's visit to the farm where he grew up and where his mother now lives alone. Accompanied by his newly acquired second wife, Peggy, and an eleven-year-old stepson, Joey spends three days reassessing and evaluating the course his life has run. But for Joey and Peggy, the delicate balance of love and sex is threatened by a dangerous new awareness.
Read Less
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fair. Ex-library book, usual markings. Hardback with dust cover. Well read copy with some spine wear. Colouring of page edges due to age. Quick dispatch from UK seller.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside. This book has hardback covers. Clean from markings. In good all round condition. No dust jacket. Re-bound by library. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item, 400grams, ISBN:
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Used-Good. Good Hardback in good dustjacket. Firm copy in tight binding. Pages lightly foxed. Dust jacket not price clipped; discoloured with light shelf wear to edges.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Good. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 144 p. May show signs of wear, highlighting, writing, and previous use. This item may be a former library book with typical markings. No guarantee on products that contain supplements Your satisfaction is 100% guaranteed. Twenty-five year bookseller with shipments to over fifty million happy customers.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
Fine. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 144 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Choose your shipping method in Checkout. Costs may vary based on destination.
Seller's Description:
New. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 144 p. In Stock. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Brand New, Perfect Condition, allow 4-14 business days for standard shipping. To Alaska, Hawaii, U.S. protectorate, P.O. box, and APO/FPO addresses allow 4-28 business days for Standard shipping. No expedited shipping. All orders placed with expedited shipping will be cancelled. Over 3, 000, 000 happy customers.
Of the Farm, this early novel by John Updike, tells the story of a successful Manhattan professional who, with his second wife and her precocious son, visits his mother on the family farm, where memories and accusations ensue.
In a New York Review of Books essay, British novelist Ian McEwan praises Updike's voracious eye for detail, even in the sex scenes, which have outraged some feminists for the narrative "male gaze."
This isn't my objection so much as the author's penchant for overwriting and strained metaphors.
There's no question that Updike is often masterful at anatomizing cross-generational familial conflicts, but as perhaps might be expected in an American novel of the early Sixties, the author's rendering of female consciousness is quite traditional in his women characters' male dependence, emasculating power or supposed inferior intellect. Some of the protagonist's reveries about his wife's body as a landscape are frankly embarrassing. At one point, the protagonist looks at the scudding Pennsylvania clouds, seeing one that evokes "lawyers at loggerheads." Toward the end the novel takes a theological turn.
This reviewer has inestimable respect for Updike the critic, and as the author of the Rabbit tetralogy. His command of genres is comparable to a man of letters such as Edmund Wilson. But it may well be that his prodigious production was also something of a weakness, because some of the later novels received awful reviews.
The late novelist David Foster Wallace grouped Updike with Mailer and Roth as among the Great American Narcissists; that is, Updike's protagonists often seemed versions of the author himself. Even in the Rabbit novels, the deliberately limited perspective causes Updike to stereotype Japanese businessmen and, arguably, blacks in Rabbit, Redux. Women and ethnic novelists provide a necessary counterbalance to Updike's vision of America.