Updike has always been overly, eloquently descriptive, but here the pace is leaden and simply getting through the book is hard work, like reading a particularly dull epic poem as a scholarly assignment.

The plot proposes that vengeful Chris comes back to Eastwick too, having learned some of Darryl's magic to use against the widow-witches. One of them succumbs - but then, though Chris is gay, Sukie disarms him by seducing him, giving Updike a chance to describe yet again his favourite sexual scenario, a blowjob - to him, anchored in his own era, ever thrilling, despite becoming the small change of sex to later generations.

"She laughed, wickedly, and flicked his engorged glans with her grainy tongue, keeping her eyes rolled upward to his face." Please!

Time for the hammer? But if The Widows of Eastwick is more than a disappointment, let's remember here the greatness of what has come before, in particular the Angstrom novels, in particular Rabbit at Rest. "Among prose works which address the American century, Rabbit has few obvious betters" (Martin Amis).