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Book Review By Maria Gatea
Villages by John Updike

Owen Mackenzie is an elderly retired software designer living in a marital bliss with his second wife, Julia, in a small town from Massachusetts. However, the true story is about all the other women that once existed in Owen's life.
The character has a lot of flashbacks, remembering about his first marriage with Phyllis, an brilliant mathematician and MIT graduate but a rather frigid woman. Despite not having a great sex life with Phyllis, they still manage to have a bunch of children. They struggle a lot financially, but ultimately Owen and his best friend, Ed, start a small software business thta does quite well. The couple (Owen and Phyllis) buy a house in Middlefalls and raise their children there. during those years, Owen has a lot of affairs with several of the housewifes from Middlefalls. The affairs are a pretext for the author to write quite freely about love, married life of middle class America and about sex. After several affairs, Owen meets Julia, the wife of a pastor that recently moved to the village. They both realized they are hopelessly in love with each other and decide to divorce and get married.


Plot & Themes
Tone of book? - thoughtful
Time/era of story - 1960's-1970's
Romance/Romance Problems Yes
Kind of romance:
Family, struggle with Yes
Struggle with: - Wife
Is this an adult or child's book? - Adult or Young Adult Book

Setting
How much descriptions of surroundings? - 2 ()
Small town? Yes
Small town people: - very gullible, like Gomer Pyle

Writing Style
Sex in book? Yes
What kind of sex: - descript of kissing - impregnation/reproduction - actual description of hetero sex - Vagia talk! - Weiner talk!
Amount of dialog - roughly even amounts of descript and dialog
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