gmcgregor
It's a lot of pretty heavy material without much to lighten it up. The women have some small moments of sympathy, but are largely negative people that aren't very enjoyable to read about. You would think that the literal devil would be a compelling character, at least. He's supposed to be interesting, right? Not as Updike writes him. Daryl is never written as even particularly physically attractive, much less the charismatic wily schemer you would expect the Prince of Darkness to be. There was no one to care about, much less identify with or root for. Updike's writing is good (if you're into the flowery-language-and-run-on-sentences kind of writing, which I tend to be), but the story falls completely flat.
Because I didn't like the book, I spent much less time thinking about it and its plot as a story and more time wondering if I thought this was, as it is usually considered, a feminist work. On the one hand, you have women who are close friends, who have discovered and own their power, who have the sex lives they want to have, who are not defined by their motherhood, and who are unapologetic for any of this. While we're often presented with narratives about men who behave in an antisocial manner and asked to consider them the heroes of the story, The Witches of Eastwick is a rare example of this phenomenon for female characters. On the other hand, they aren't given many redeeming features, either: they aren't funny or really all that interesting, they're petty, and they're driven to a murderous jealous rage over...a man. Their "happy endings" only come when they've each found themselves...a man. I think on the balance, it's more feminist than not, but I will qualify that by saying that Updike writes terribly about the experience of being a woman. When he writes about sex or menses, it's cringeworthy. And even if it's mostly feminist, that doesn't mean I have to like it. I didn't, and I wouldn't recommend it. It's just not fun to read.