Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Updike, John (Vol. 139) - Robert Boyers (review date 17 November 1997)


Updike, John (Vol. 139) - Robert Boyers (review date 17 November 1997)

Robert Boyers (review date 17 November 1997)

SOURCE: “Bullets of Milk,” in New Republic, November 17, 1997, pp. 38–42.

[In the following review, Boyers gives an unfavorable assessment of Toward the End of Time.]

John Updike's new novel [, Toward the End of Time,] is set in the year 2020, not long after a brief but devastating war in which millions of American and Chinese citizens were killed. We see none of this killing, and we are told nothing of the causes that led to the war or that brought it to a close. Occasional references are made to the resultant aftermath to a collapsed national economy and deteriorating office buildings, to a “depopulated” Midwest and abandoned neighborhoods; but we do not tour those neighborhoods or feel in any way the effects of the reported disaster. A passing reference to Chinese missiles, or to Mexico as a golden land of opportunity, will remind us that something consequential has...

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