Of the Farm: A Novel

Of the Farm: A Novel

• John Updike, farm a small masterpiece

In this short novel, Joey Robinson, a thirty-five-year-old New Yorker, describes a visit he makes, with his second wife and eleven-year-old stepson, to the Pennsylvania farm where he grew up and where his aging mother now lives alone. For three days, a quartet of voices explores the air, making confessions, seeking alignments, quarreling, pleading, and pardoning. They are not entirely alone: ghosts (fathers, lovers, children) press upon them, as do phantoms from the near future (nurses, lawyers, land developers). <i>Of the Farm </i>concerns the places people choose to live their lives, and the strategies they use to stand their ground.