The Widows of Eastwick

　　菲力普．羅斯：「厄普代克是我們時代最偉大的文學家。」
　　馬丁．艾米斯：「他毫無疑問是20世紀美國最偉大的小說家之一。」

　　《東村寡婦》（The Widows of Eastwick）是《東村女巫》（曾改拍為電影《紫屋魔戀》）的後續之作，故事中亞麗珊卓、珍和蘇琪——已為寡婦，但仍然是女巫——結伴遊歷異國，又回到曾被她們鬧得天翻地覆的羅德島州東威克這個濱海城鎮——「盛年時期的場景」，三十多年前她們魔法嬉鬧的地方。

　　惡魔般的達若．范洪恩已經不在了，而一度是放縱和自由的中心，如今是「健康生活的避風港」，住著接送孩子去運動的媽媽和愛家的好男人，與女巫當年為人父母卻肆意放縱的生活方式大相逕庭。

　　這三個女人心境有餘但體力已弱，必須面對一種要求「順從」的強力反制法術。
 
　　在這本淘氣而精采的小說中，約翰．厄普代克寫出了他最好的水準——一個文學魔法的傳奇大師，再次演出他那令人歡喜的昔日戲法。

　　More than three decades after the events described in The Witches of Eastwick, Alexandra, Jane, and Sukie — widowed, aging, and with their occult powers fading — return for the summer to the Rhode Island town where they once made piquant scandal and sometimes deadly mischief. But what was then a center of license and liberation is now a “haven of wholesomeness” populated by hockey moms and househusbands primly rebelling against their absent, reckless, self-involved parents. With spirits still free but energy waning, the three women reconstitute their coven to confront not only this youthful counterspell of propriety but also the enmity of those longtime townsfolk who, through their youthful witchery, they irreparably harmed. In this wise and wicked satire on the way we make peace with our pasts, John Updike proves himself a wizard on every page.

★本書中譯版《東村寡婦》由聯合文學出版。

作者簡介

約翰．厄普代克　John Updike

　　一九三二年出生於美國賓州西林頓。一九五四年畢業於哈佛學院，並在英國牛津大學的「拉斯金美術學校」研讀一年。一九五五至一九五七年間，任職於《紐約客》雜誌。厄普代克著有二十多部長篇小說、十幾本短篇小說集，以及詩集、藝術評論、文學評論和童書。其中「兔子四部曲」的《兔子富了》（Rabbit Is Rich, 1981）以及《兔子安息》（Rabbit at Rest, 1990）雙雙獲得「普立茲獎」。獲獎無數的厄普代克也曾獲美國「國家圖書獎」、「美國圖書獎」、「國家書評獎」、「羅森陶獎」和「霍威爾獎章」肯定。二○○○七年他獲得「美國藝術文學學院」的「小說金質獎」。約翰．厄普代克於二○○九年一月去世。生前最後一部長篇小說《東村寡婦》，被譽為「很可能是自一九九○年代普立茲得獎作《兔子安息》後（厄普代克的）最佳小說。」

　　John Updike was born in Shillington, Pennsylvania, in 1932. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954 and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Foundation Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal. In 2007 he received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. John Updike died in January 2009.