Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Couples: A Novel
    Couples: A Novel
    Couples: A Novel
    Audiobook18 hours

    Couples: A Novel

    Written by John Updike

    Narrated by Ari Fliakos

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    The provocative novel about sex in suburbia, striking in its complete sexual frankness and rightly praised as an artful, seductive, savagely graphic portrayal of love, marriage and adultery in America.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
    Release dateFeb 4, 2020
    ISBN9780593150061
    Author

    John Updike

    Bestselling American novelist John Updike is also a short-story writer, poet, and critic. His most famous works include The Witches of Eastwick and the Rabbit trilogy.

    More audiobooks from John Updike

    Related to Couples

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      FROM THE WD EDITORS: Our favourite Beginnings and Endings

      Jul 31, 2019

      The best beginnings toss readers into the whirlwind that is going to be your story right as the action begins, giving them no choice but to read further. The best endings stick with readers for years after they’ve closed the book. WD editors got toge

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Two Poems by Charles Baudelaire

      Jun 9, 2020

      After my friend and I left the tobacco shop, he carefully sorted his loose change; slipped some small gold coins in his left jacket pocket; into the right went the silver pieces; in his left pants pocket, a handful of centimes; and in the right, a si

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      How We Made An Angel At My Table

      Oct 11, 2020

      Jane Campion read To the Is-land in 1982 while a film student in Sydney. Her mother, Edith, sent her a copy. She’d loved Frame’s books since reading Owls Do Cry as a teenager. She cried. She had an idea. Back in New Zealand for Christmas, she asked h

      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      'The Plot' Works As Literary Satire, But Its Mystery Fizzles

      May 16, 2021

      Jean Hanff Korelitz's tale of dirty deeds in the world of letters skewers pompous male authors with sly humor — but her approach to the central mystery might have you guessing the ending too soon.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2023

      People let themselves down so hard they took to clappingwhen the plane lands. Sometimes even at the creditsof a movie. Their funerals turned out to be for the livingall along. You wouldn’t know how much they hatedcrowded trains by the way they kept b

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      TV Pieces Of Her

      Mar 24, 2022

      TV Pieces Of Her
      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Beauty And The Feast: Savoring ‘The Taste Of Things’

      Feb 8, 2024

      The marvelous new French film “The Taste of Things,” set in 1885, opens with a culinary flourish. Eugénie (Juliette Binoche), the head cook of a famed Loire Valley château, is whipping up a storm in the kitchen. She swings adroitly between kettles, s

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Then the Birds Began to Die

      Jul 22, 2021

      Then the Birds Began to Die
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Sisterly Significance

      Feb 24, 2020

      Sisterly Significance
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Summer Reading Guide

      May 16, 2022

      Summer Reading Guide
      15 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Now That It’s Come to This

      Jun 3, 2021

      Now That It’s Come to This
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Coastal Mississippi

      Jul 13, 2021

      Coastal Mississippi
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      You’ll Need Me When They’re Gone: The Poems We Reach For in Grief

      Nov 14, 2019

      I am all too aware of the place contemporary poetry occupies for most people: They reach for poems when they’re in love or when they’re coping with death. The post You’ll Need Me When They’re Gone: The Poems We Reach For in Grief appeared first on Th

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Blue-collar Bard

      Jul 13, 2020

      The Blue-collar Bard
      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Low Expectations

      Feb 1, 2019

      Low Expectations
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Couples

    3.5/5

    256 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      John Updike sure can write!!
      By sally tarbox on 14 April 2018
      Format: Kindle Edition
      This is the most amazing read; set in a middle-class New England town in the 60s, the couples are married, most with kids; they socialize,live their daily lives and get caught up in liaisons.
      This is emphatically not a book to lend your mother, it's outspoken and based around sex, yet it's far from being a shallow, raunchy read. The characters are believable - we might disapprove of their actions but we get their motivations. And while at one point I was thinking "oh, no more!", you have to read it through to the end, the denouement, the ripples from it; the jealousies, broken friendships...
      As our adulterous, charming lead character, building contractor (and church-goer) Piet Hanema observes: "God is not mocked."
      Despite what you think as you read it, ultimately a moral message; fantastic writing.
    • 5/5
      John Updike, author of "Couples" died from cancer in 2009 at the age of 76. He never won the Nobel Prize for literature but many critics and writers felt he should have. He wrote 21 novels, including the four famed "Rabbit" books, as well as poems, short stories, essays, children's books, a play and a memoir.


      "Couples" was written in 1968; the 458 page story takes place in the early 60's in the fictional community of Tarbox, somewhere outside Boston. Tarbox is a community of 30-something couples, coupling with each others' spouses, not exactly "wife-swapping", nor is the word "swinging" precise. Some characters used the term "adultery", while others were more comfortable with "affairs". There were a lot of affairs, lots of coupling and uncoupling with each other but generally everybody was rather north-easternly civil about it; virtually no punches nor naughty words are thrown. Nor were there whips nor sex toys nor legal abortions - this was the early 60s. While there are about a dozen couples who pop up from time to time, going to dinners, cocktail parties, ski events, etc. "Couples" focuses mainly on a half dozen or so of them.


      This was a very racy story for its time, and contrary to some reader reviews still racy for 2017; it's sex scenes are often lengthy and detailed though without being grotesquely graphic. And the writing is just excellent. In the background, Updike reminds us of the political and social upheavals of the day - the Cuba crisis, the Assassination, women's evolving role in the workplace, the Viet Nam war.


      Though the book is about couples, it is not a romance. You don't see the word "love" much at all; there are no heroes. There are lots of community flaws exposed - it's about married life, it's about relationships, it's about sex, it's about the 60s. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      suffocating, disturbing, funny in places; but ultimately empty and the pacing drops away in the last third of the book, after things between Foxy Whitman & Piet Hanema come to a conclusion, it's all meandering about from there.
    • 3/5
      For me, Updike is one of those writers whose artistry I can appreciate, but whose subject matter tends to depress me, so I've only read 3 or 4 of his books. I recall this one as being pretty much a downer, but it did hold my interest.
    • 3/5
      Just as the seemingly endless cast of couples begins to make sense in the reader's mind, they all start swapping partners. Bizarre caricature characters populate the perfectly believable town of Tarbox - but don't go hoping for a Sodom-style smiting.
    • 3/5
      Gee, were things really like this in the 1960s? No wonder the 'women's liberation' movement began with so much energy and anger and books like Marilyn French's "The Women's Room" changed so many lives (mine included).

      This story of a bunch of couples living in the New England region of the USA was painful for me to read in some parts because it reminded me of my own earlier years (although lived around ten years later than the setting of this novel). It's a story of male dominance and female (largely 'willing') submission. Sex drives the men and they don't seem to understand, or wish to understand, why they do it, just as they might go to church without any perceptible impact on their life, except perhaps a vague feeling of nostalgia when the church burns down after a lightning strike. Having sex with lots of women in the group of couples is not a problem unless the woman gets pregnant *and* your paternity is discovered. This isn't much of a problem because this time is one in which the newly marketed contraceptive pill is releasing *men* from that fear.

      I'm not sure what Updike wants us to make of this story. I'm going to read another of his books ("Rabbit, Run") before I pass judgment...and maybe the others in the "Rabbit" series which won Pulitzer Prizes.
    • 3/5
      At the end, the local church is struck by lightning. A judgment on wife swapping and cunnilingus? Or simply divine displeasure with the the marriage of portentousness with fecklessness?
    • 3/5
      I was disappointed by this novel as had really admired Updike's Rabbit trilogy. I found myself bored by these couples and their fornications:perhaps I wouldn't have had this reaction when I was younger and then would have got a kick out of the more graphic descriptions of the sexual act. I realise that Updike may have meant us to be critical of these self-regarding people but in the end I got bored with them as they seemed to have felt bored with each other. Lost souls?
    • 3/5
      Updike is a strange old coot. I think his writing has these weird flashes of brilliance interrupted by flashy, show-off-y styling, and galling sexism. I kind of enjoy seeing how far he can go. Okay, I've only read Couples, so my statement is made based on a sample of one book.

      The review of The Terrorist in The Nation has this enlightening quote: "Updike [...] cannot introduce a woman without extending the same courtesy to her breasts." I have to admit that his over the top sexuality is part of what I like about him. Why pretend that he doesn't notice the boobs as much as he does? It is a bit laughable the way he describes women and men in Couples.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed reading this book but I couldn't feel any sympathy for the characters!
    • 4/5
      Extremely good. Insiteful in a mean way about marriage. Huge round characters with magnified faults. Earthy -- as in \"I am a powerful man.\" Can\'t stand the ending.
    pFad - Phonifier reborn

    Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

    Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


    Alternative Proxies:

    Alternative Proxy

    pFad Proxy

    pFad v3 Proxy

    pFad v4 Proxy