One of those books that had been sitting of a shelf in LSE's Shaw Library (a place where nobody goes except for taking a nap, clearly) untouched for a good 20 years until I decided to grab it.
Having only read a couple of books by Updike, but having really enjoyed them both, I didn't hesitate to borrow this book once I saw it (also because I do love epic family histories).
All the four sections as masterfully written (you don't say...), but not all of them are easy to approach. The initial one, frankly, was a bit of a slog. While the topic was really interesting (the loss of faith, and subsequent loss of income, of a reverend) I was finding myself lost in the depth of the theological discussions that were being presented. The second section then picked up considerably, with the story of a man who just wanted to live a serene life, followed by a third that kept my attention because of the many Hollywood references and a fourth one that felt so contemporary it could have actually been written by Jonathan Franzen. All in all, a great book that made me think also of Paul Auster's 4 3 2 1 and John Williams's Stoner
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