Of the Farm

by John Updike

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“A small masterpiece . . . With Of the Farm, John Updike has achieved a sureness of touch, a suppleness of style, and a subtlety of vision that is gained by few writers of fi ction.”—The New York Times

In this short novel, Joey Robinson, a thirty-five-year-old New Yorker, describes a visit he makes, with his second wife and eleven-year-old stepson, to the Pennsylvania farm where he grew up and where his aging mother now lives alone. For three days, a quartet of voices explores the air, making confessions, seeking alignments, quarreling, pleading, and pardoning. They are not entirely alone: ghosts (fathers, lovers, children) press upon them, as do phantoms from the near future (nurses, lawyers, land developers). Of the Farm concerns the places people choose to live their lives, and the strategies they use to stand their ground.
  • ISBN10 0233964347
  • ISBN13 9780233964348
  • Publish Date 26 April 1973
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 17 October 2003
  • Publish Country GB
  • Imprint HarperCollins Distribution Services
  • Edition Ipswich ed
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 184
  • Language English