The occult in modern times. ( )

Disturbing in the sex department and rambling on and on, the book attempts to save itself with clever dialogue and narration, but the book is extremely boring until the third act. ( )

Entertaining. I wish I had read it before seeing the movie. ( )

It has been a while since I was so unsure how exactly I felt about a book. Updike is obviously very smart and dang the guy can turn a phrase -- he has pages and pages of heavy lifting sentences composed of phrase after descriptive phrase, long paragraphs describing houses, yards, the town of Eastwick, and the bodies and mannerisms of our three protagonist witches and the banal and slightly-magical world in which they live. Interspersed with these grand paragraphs are fast-paced conversations, rambling dialogue, and meandering thoughts. Plus more than a little sex, often suddenly and roughly introduced after the reader was lulled into the pacing of the aforementioned rigorous descriptions. The three witches are all divorcees living in the small Rhode Island city of Eastwick in the Vietnam-era. They have kids that they mostly resent and ignore, and ex-husbands that were sacrificed for their wives' independence. You see, breaking free from their traditional roles as housewives unleashed witchy powers, sexual urges, and a real dislike for conventionality. Mostly they use their magic for small acts of revenge (untying shoelaces, killing barking dogs, making bugs and leaves come out of their enemies mouths), or convenience (turning milk into cream in a diner, messing up each other's tennis games). The three of them have formed a little coven and get together once a week to gossip, drink, and make passes at each other. Then a mysterious stranger, Daryl Van Horne, moves to town and shakes things up for all three witches. It soon becomes clear that he is also a bit magical and.... weird. And soon the weekly get togethers move to Daryl's house with lots of hot tubbing, sexuality, and witchy jealousy, especially when non-witch (or is she?) Jenny comes on the scene. There are some interesting, but also confusing shifts in point of view. The book is generally told in third person through the perspective of one of the three witches, but a couple (very disturbing) scenes follow a local man who one of them is having an affair with and his wife. And at the mid-point of the novel and briefly towards the end we also get a "we" perspective from the town itself, apparently looking back at the events in the novel. Finally, the ending is not what I wanted at all from these characters and, this is a me problem only, there is a lot of cancer stuff in the book that I could have done without. And yet I didn't hate it! Although I also didn't really like it. I never saw the movie version of the book, but from what I gather, the book is pretty different. I want to watch it now to see exactly how -- plus I love me some Cher.... ( )

Más de tres décadas han transcurrido desde los diabólicos sucesos que se narran en Las brujas de Eastwcik y, durante todo este tiempo, las tres protagonistas, Alexandra, Jane y Suzanne, no han perdido el contacto. En ese lapso, las tres abandonaron la localidad, volvieron a casarse y las tres acabaron enviudando. Superaron el dolor y la soledad como algunas mujeres privilegiadas afrontan esa situación: viajando a otros países, como Canadá, Egipto y China. Hasta que decidieron regresar a Eastwick a pasar el verano. El pueblo en el que sucumbieron al influjo del seductor Darryl van Horne, y en el que cometieron algo más que pequeños desaguisados, sigue envuelto en un halo mágico. Aunque Darryl ya no está, y los antiguos amantes de las tres han envejecido o muerto, siguen muy presentes las consecuencias de sus maleficios. Tendrán que enfrentarse a todo ello, y también a algunos vecinos de Eastwick que se acuerdan muy bien de las tres mujeres y que no las recibirán precisamente con los brazos abiertos.