S (Hardcover) by John Updike

CONDITION Good

A NOVEL by John Updike
CATEGORY Fiction
PUBLICATION Andre Deutsch (FIRST EDITION)

FIRST EDITION
Hardcover ISBN 0 233 98255 8 [£10]

SYNOPSIS
The story of S. concerns Sarah Worth, a latter-day Hester Prynne who has become enamored of a Hindu religious leader called the Arhat. A New Englander, she goes west to join his commune in Arizona, & there mingles with the other sannyasins (pilgrims) in the difficult attempt to subdue ego & achieve moksha (salvation, release from illusion).

John Updikes thirteenth novel takes the form of letters & tapes that his forty-two-year-old heroine dispatches, to her husband, her mother, her daughter, her brother, her hairdresser, her psychiatrist, her dentist, & others as she strives to keep her old world in order while creating for herself a new one. This is Hesters version of the triangle set forth in Hawthornes Scarlet Letter; it is also a meditation upon American womanhood, a romance, & a religious comedy.