John Updike is treading familiar ground. Of course, anyone who has written as much as well as he has can relax and repeat a few themes.
Updike's recent work, \Villages,"" has all the solid characterization, entrancing plot development and originality that is standard for him. Its single drawback is the easy comparison to his 1968 work, ""Couples."" Given that this work was an intelligent, multi-faceted work about sexual passion and suburban tensions, Updike's one flaw with ""Villages"" is more or less a strength.
The book centers on Owen Mackenzie, a retired entrepreneur and computer programmer living out his time in Haskell's Crossing, a comfortable suburb fit for 70-year-olds like him. Beside him is Julia, his second wife and a reminder of his prodigal history. Here Owen sits in for Updike, whose lives show enough similarities to make ""Villages"" seem autobiographical.
In 1957 Updike moved to Ipswich, Mass., which served well enough to be the model for the backdrop of ""Couples."" Because Updike spent 17 years there, it carried to the work of the day, with Haskell's Crossing sharing plenty of similarities with Ipswich. In the hands of a lesser writer, such a place would seem ordinary and even empty. However, with Updike, the town has richness and detail extending from the Mackenzies' front step to the veteran's memorial.
Within Haskell's Crossing, Owen is trapped by the loss of momentum and trappings of a shrinking social network. His wife knows more people than he does, even though many of them only get into the paper when it's in the obituaries. Owen has reached a point where age has made him into an observer with failing eyes. In his memory, he is as sharp as ever, flipping through his sensual development from the first time he heard about intercourse to the way Julia wakes up.
Owen followed a reluctant line of sexual maturity, scared by early trysts and awkward on his wedding night. His first marriage made that wife, Phyllis, little more than a housewife with an MIT education. The stagnation of this relationship inevitably ends with an affair that steadily grows more unwieldy. It is in the first rendezvous with Faye, the woman involved, that Updike shows how he can use graphically intimate language without making ""Villages"" into an exercise in pornography.
Owen and Faye meet in a remote nature preserve and hesitate in each other's arms. Updike pits their bodies against their minds, with Owen struggling against his marital faithfulness and Faye against Owen. The wording swings from lustful to restrained exactly as needed. The shifts from deep-seated fears of discovery to groping hands is fluid and rhythmic, like most of ""Villages.""
Though Owen, as a character, does not measure up to Harry Angstrom of ""Rabbit, Run"" and later books, his nuances make him entirely believable. The three women who define him-Phyllis, Faye and Julia-offer three exemplary foils. None of them intrude on Owen's place or position in the novel and each has astonishing depth. This balance of characters separates ""Villages"" from ""Couples"" and ensures Updike's works will remain in the highest possible tier of American literature.
