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Title details for In the Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike - Available

In the Beauty of the Lilies

A Novel

by John Updike
ebook
4 of 4 copies available
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4 of 4 copies available
In the Beauty of the Lilies begins in 1910 and traces God’s relation to four generations of American seekers, beginning with Clarence Wilmot, a clergyman in Paterson, New Jersey. He loses his faith but finds solace at the movies, respite from “the bleak facts of life, his life, gutted by God’s withdrawal.” His son, Teddy, becomes a mailman who retreats from American exceptionalism, religious and otherwise, into a life of studied ordinariness. Teddy has a daughter, Esther, who becomes a movie star, an object of worship, an All-American goddess. Her neglected son, Clark, is possessed of a native Christian fervor that brings the story full circle: in the late 1980s he joins a Colorado sect called the Temple, a handful of “God’s elect” hastening the day of reckoning. In following the Wilmots’ collective search for transcendence, John Updike pulls one wandering thread from the tapestry of the American Century and writes perhaps the greatest of his later novels.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 26, 2009

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780307421333

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780307421333
      • File size: 2228 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 20, 1997
      The spiritual and sexual malaise of a multigenerational American family is the focus of Updike's masterful novel, a six-week PW bestseller.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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