Alas, it is also the case that the original novelist too may find himself so distanced in time, energy and grasp on contemporary life that he cannot go back into his own fictional world with any creative power. Such is the case with The Widows of Eastwick.

John Updike, like Le Carré also 76, published The Witches of Eastwick back in 1984, a novel gamely expressing his sense that female sexuality is akin to black magic, dependent upon men but also exercising power over them.

In 1987, the novel was successfully simplified into a film directed by George Miller of Mad Max fame. Jack Nicholson rampageously played the demonic Darryl Van Horne and the lustful witches were Cher, Susan Sarandon and Michelle Pfeiffer. Although a travesty, it is the version by which the story remains best known.

In the book, the witches kill a young woman, Jenny, whom Darryl has married - and he flees Eastwick with her younger brother Chris, apparently his lover, while the witches conjure up prospective husbands for themselves. In the film, Jenny was completely abolished. Instead, the witches simply see off Darryl in a magical duel and each happily has a devilish son by him.

Twenty-four years after the event, Updike has returned to his three witches, now widows and scattered around the States. Alex (the one played by Cher) tries a trip on her own to see Canada and the Grand Canyon but is lonely and bored. After many years of separation, she re-establishes contact with Jane (Sarandon) and they take a trip together to Egypt to see the pyramids. Finally ("the coven reconstituted"), the pair meet up with Sukie (Pfeiffer) and all three tour China - a travelogue section echoing the sightseeing tour organised for Updike by the Smithsonian Institution and described in his most recent volume of prose, Due Considerations.