However…
Right in the middle of the book, there’s a sympathetic depiction of a man murdering his wife for nagging, with most characters and the narrative agreeing she had it coming.
So not really beating the allegations there, Updike.

One more word on the middle of the book: I was enjoying this quite a lot, silly though it is.
I don’t think it’s SUPER feminist but it’s a positive depiction of women being powerful and weird and unconventionally sexy, which complicates Updike’s reputation as the biggest sexist to ever live.

To be honest, and I am semi-serious about this, I think Updike wanted to write a story about three hot witches and accidentally backed into making one of them awesome

I think this is porn but, like, literary porn

I’m not a man to be critical, but I have to say the witch orgy doesn’t have much build up

Only one way to find out!
I do think the ‘Europeans are effete and can’t fight’ thing is overdone. A lot of the countries in the EU had empires within living memory.
They can’t project power like the US but they’re not exactly Venezuela either.

Ukraine is not in NATO or the EU and we are not treaty bound to protect it.
Not the case for Greenland or Denmark.

(He’s also horny because it’s an Updike novel)

A guy called Van Horne who associates with a coven of witches hmm what could that possibly be a reference too

You have to love Alexandra summoning a two-mile wide thunderstorm just because someone was talking shit behind her back

Updike was a notorious misogynist so it’s interesting to see him attempt a feminist novel

I’m a third of the way through and so far the witches seem pretty awesome, which I THINK is intentional

Still on my Updike thing for now.

Our seven-month-old has always said ‘agooo!’ (at scream volume) when she is really pissed off about something.

TBH if true Mike would be an interesting character for the first time in a couple of seasons.

That would be an awesome counterpoint to all the information about Rome’s military machine

It makes sense in the context of Heinlein being a writer.
It’s beneficial for writers to be generalists with wide life experiences. A lot of them have been. Orwell, Hemingway, etc…
It doesn’t mean a society of people like that would be very efficient, though.

A lot less snarky than this idea deserves