Couples (Masterplots II: American Fiction Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: John Updike
- First Published: 1968
- Type of Plot: Erotic realism
- Time of Work: The summer and autumn of 1963 and the winter and spring of 1964
- Setting: Tarbox, Massachusetts, a fictitious town in Plymouth County, southeast of Boston along the Atlantic coast
- Principal Characters: Piet Hanema, Elizabeth “Foxy” Whitman, Angela Hanema, Ruth Hanema, Ken Whitman, Freddy, Matt, Roger, Frank, Harold, Eddie, Ben, John
- Genres: Long fiction
- Subjects: 1960’s
- Locales: Tarbox, MA
The Novel
The story of Couples is relatively simple, but the plot is extraordinarily convoluted and complex. At the beginning of the novel, nine middle-class or upper-middle-class couples, mostly in their thirties, with mortgages, children, pets, and professions, live in an interconnected social world in the fictitious bedroom community of Tarbox, located slightly south of Boston in Plymouth County. The appearance of a young couple who move to Tarbox from Cambridge causes a series of realignments within the group and finally, by the novel’s end, two divorces, and...
[The entire page is 1682 words long]
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