John Updike

The inhabitants of a central New Jersey poorhouse argue about the decline of patriotism, tradition, and religion while participating in the activities of their annual fair. Reprint.

The Poorhouse Fair

Ada 

I would like my time back, thank you. Seriously, what was this??? For more than half the book, nothing is happening, nor is the author contributing to the storyline via character or atmosphere building. For the second half of the book, I honestly started flipping through the mumbo-jumbo, and then going back on it, but it didn’t make much sense. It was difficult to follow, really boring, and overall did not make an impact. I’ll try some other work of Updike’s, because this was not fun.

“Brilliant . . . Here is the conflict of real ideas; of real personalities; here is a work of intellectual imagination and great charity. The Poorhouse Fair is a work of art.”—The New York Times Book Review The hero of John Updike’s first novel, published when the author was twenty-six, is ninety-four-year-old John Hook, a dying man who yet refuses to be dominated. His world is a poorhouse—a county home for the aged and infirm—overseen by Stephen Conner, a righteous young man who considers it his duty to know what is best for others. The action of the novel unfolds over a single summer’s day, the day of the poorhouse’s annual fair, a day of escalating tensions between Conner and the rebellious Hook. Its climax is a contest between progress and tradition, benevolence and pride, reason and faith. Praise for The Poorhouse Fair “A first novel of rare precision and real merit . . . a rich poorhouse indeed.”—Newsweek “Turning on a narrow plot of ground, it achieves the rarity of bounded, native truth, and comes forth as microcosm.”—Commonweal

The Poorhouse Fair

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