Exploding Helicopters #9 John Updike - In The Beauty Of The Lilies Just to be perfectly clear, I would never ordinarily read a book with such a shit title if it wasn’t by John Updike. John Updike is awesome. He writes books that are unlike most of the other writers I’m into. They’re normally about shit marriages, and In The Beauty Of The Lilies is different only in that it’s about several generations of the same family having shit marriages, and actually one of the marriages works rather well in an endearing aaaw, aren’t they such wonderfully simple folk? kind of a way. It all kicks off with a pastor losing his faith wholly and suddenly in the opening chapter (brilliant brilliant brilliant). Then you meet the docile son Teddy, his daughter Essie, who becomes a movie star, and then her unloved son Clark, who is involved in possibly the most dramatic storyline in any of the Updike books I have read or even been aware of. It’s structured in four main parts, each for that generation’s protagonist, and when each story comes to an end it’s genuinely sad to say goodbye to that character, even if they do reoccur later. None of Updike’s characters are ever 100% likeable, and I find myself wanting to give some people a bloody good talking too, but that’s because he writes real people that you instantly believe in. This isn’s a normal Exploding Helicopters post because there aren’t millions of take-your-breath-away sentences in the book. But there are take-your-breath-away moments, where you’re genuinely frightened or moved or over the moon. They won’t have the same impact here, without the individual backstories, but these are some of the moments that had me emoting like a bastard. “My poor Dad wanted to believe and needed to believe and God stayed silent.”“He’s not silent with me.”“What does He tell you?”Her hand had gone to the sensitive bump behind his fly. “To love you with all my heart,” she said. “To serve you, in the faith that you’ll serve me.” “The M-16’s what they issued us in Vietnam. She’s a sweetie, when she don’t jam. There were a lot of complaints from deceased users about it jamming, so they renamed it from the M-16A1 to the M-16A2 and it worked much better. Here son. You hold her.” “Clark? G-g-g-” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t get past the ‘g’. This simple word. He hung up while she was still trying. His own mother, and all those FBI eavesdroppers listening to her humiliation. “Goodbye,” she said in her bedroom to herself, looking into one of her mirrors, tilting her head this way and that. “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, you idiot,” furious with herself. How fucking sad is that? It kills me. John Updike - In The Beauty Of The LiliesPublication date: 1996Publisher: PenguinPrice then: £6.99Price now: £2Bought from: Some place on Charing Cross Road, London. I didn’t write the name down because I am a bad blogger. From the synopsis: “transcendence, higher reality, immortality, resurrections… a novel of accumulated wisdoms.”

Exploding Helicopters #9

John Updike - In The Beauty Of The Lilies

Just to be perfectly clear, I would never ordinarily read a book with such a shit title if it wasn’t by John Updike. John Updike is awesome. He writes books that are unlike most of the other writers I’m into. They’re normally about shit marriages, and In The Beauty Of The Lilies is different only in that it’s about several generations of the same family having shit marriages, and actually one of the marriages works rather well in an endearing aaaw, aren’t they such wonderfully simple folk? kind of a way.

It all kicks off with a pastor losing his faith wholly and suddenly in the opening chapter (brilliant brilliant brilliant). Then you meet the docile son Teddy, his daughter Essie, who becomes a movie star, and then her unloved son Clark, who is involved in possibly the most dramatic storyline in any of the Updike books I have read or even been aware of. It’s structured in four main parts, each for that generation’s protagonist, and when each story comes to an end it’s genuinely sad to say goodbye to that character, even if they do reoccur later. None of Updike’s characters are ever 100% likeable, and I find myself wanting to give some people a bloody good talking too, but that’s because he writes real people that you instantly believe in.

This isn’s a normal Exploding Helicopters post because there aren’t millions of take-your-breath-away sentences in the book. But there are take-your-breath-away moments, where you’re genuinely frightened or moved or over the moon. They won’t have the same impact here, without the individual backstories, but these are some of the moments that had me emoting like a bastard.

“My poor Dad wanted to believe and needed to believe and God stayed silent.”
“He’s not silent with me.”
“What does He tell you?”
Her hand had gone to the sensitive bump behind his fly. “To love you with all my heart,” she said. “To serve you, in the faith that you’ll serve me.”

“The M-16’s what they issued us in Vietnam. She’s a sweetie, when she don’t jam. There were a lot of complaints from deceased users about it jamming, so they renamed it from the M-16A1 to the M-16A2 and it worked much better. Here son. You hold her.”

“Clark? G-g-g-” She couldn’t say it, couldn’t get past the ‘g’. This simple word. He hung up while she was still trying. His own mother, and all those FBI eavesdroppers listening to her humiliation. “Goodbye,” she said in her bedroom to herself, looking into one of her mirrors, tilting her head this way and that. “Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye, you idiot,” furious with herself.

How fucking sad is that? It kills me.

John Updike - In The Beauty Of The Lilies
Publication date: 1996
Publisher: Penguin
Price then: £6.99
Price now: £2
Bought from: Some place on Charing Cross Road, London. I didn’t write the name down because I am a bad blogger.

From the synopsis: “transcendence, higher reality, immortality, resurrections… a novel of accumulated wisdoms.”