The Women Who Got Away

by John Updike

In the small town of Pierce Junction adultery is the popular pastime and pillow talk the common currency. Martin knows the women he hasn’t yet seduced hold his attention for the longest, and Winifred, married to his own wife’s lover, stirs him in ways he never expects.

United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love’s endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love…

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, 20th Century, The United States Of America, American, Romance, Classics

106 pages, Paperback

First published August 2, 2007

About the author

John Hoyer Updike was an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well known for his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, having published 22 novels and more than a dozen short story collections as well as poetry, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in The New Yorker since the 1950s. His works often explore sex, faith, and death, and their inter-relationships.

He died of lung cancer at age 76.

Reviews

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Natural Color - a man sees his former mistress in a store; at best it's melodramatic, at worst it's a little foreboding (3 stars)

New York Girl - an affair is begun with a woman in New York, while the man is questioning his marriage; the switches kept me on my toes (3 stars)

Licks of Love in the Heart of the Cold War - a banjo player is touring communist Russia (2 stars)

The Women Who Got Away - a married couple have affairs on the side, but eventually divorce (3 stars)

Transaction - an encounter between a 40-year-old man and a prostitute in the city of N—; the main character is really patronizing and uncomfortable with people of color, but the writing is good (2 stars)

[Ke* · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ughh.
Misogynistic phantasies of a racist male.
Won't read another Updike.

[Nalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short and sweet, these stories speak directly to the heart. Updike is discriptive yet not tiring, and displays his wonderful language skills masterfully. He tells simple stories that could have happened to anyone, and this is where his magic lays. The reader can relate and shed a tear over stories that remind him of his own love life.

[Thomas Goddard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is fantastic. It is about unpleasant men and unpleasant women. It is spectacularly easy to tell that the author isn't romanticising the characters and making them out to be heroes. They are very clearly caricatures. Or, it should be easy to tell...

The short stories are neat, easy to follow, sharp and turn on a dime.

I really lament that this gets hate-rated by people. I'm not going to argue against their perspective because it's so juvenile it's laughable.

'Writer bad because writes bad things.'

It's remarkably asinine but then, their top rated books tend to follow a pretty low trajectory. So I think that maybe this one just scuffed their crowns. I think most of them are just young, so they can't really be blamed. I used to think some really bad writing was spectacular and dismissed classics that I didn't understand. We all grow, with luck.

I like Updike. I like how he drops us into a world populated with doll-like women, perpetually drunk men, money, boredom, dispassionate people and even more dispassionate sex. I love his descriptions. The pettiness too.

I don't think Updike set out to write books that so clearly evidence the depravity and grossness of the middle classes. I think he was middle class and just wrote what came into his brain. And that ended up being stories about his characters exploiting the lower classes. And about those characters wasting their lives in the pursuit of any sort of escape from monotony. Ultimately none of them realise that their salvation lies in a simple acknowledgment of their shittiness.

Read this. It's quick. It has a punch.

I'm rating this one five stars just to redress the balance. It's probably more like a four star.

[Richa Bhattarai · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disliked the book, it seems nothing more than a male fantasy to write lasciviously about women, and vulgarly about sexual encounters. All five stories have the same plot of extramarital affairs and women who are madly in lust with the narrator or the ‘protagonist’, who is a really, really annoying character.

My husband laughed when he saw I was reading this, mentioning, ‘There’s nothing but sex in there, I’m sure.’ Just read some samples:

‘Standing again above the basin’s bright moon, he felt his genitals stir, sweeten, with the idea of it: the idea of shaving, so domestically, to oblige this ungrateful stringy whore in the next room.’

‘His hard prick glittered when her profile did not eclipse it.’

‘Though Ann’a fucking felt like an attack, his prick held its own, and his hypnotic touch on her nipple also held.’

Aargh. Winner of the most off-putting, libido-killing sex scenes ever.

Anyway, humor makes things bearable in two stories - The Women Who Got Away and Licks of Love in the Heart of the Cold War. I laughed out loud a couple of times. The author is clever and knowledgeable enough about the art of writing.

But I will not be reading any more of Mr. Updike and his teenaged desires.

[Yalda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Yes, it is about adultery. I haven't been married for a single day and I don't have the slightest idea how adultery feels like, but if making it sound dull was his purpose, he has perfectly made it. I still adore his literary style.

[Kristi · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really feel for any woman who ever loved John Updike, should any such person even exist.

[Suzie Grogan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those short collections that should make you want to read more of an author's work, but it has had the opposite effect on me. This is a cold analysis and acceptance of adultery, from a male perspective that makes the reader confused as to whether it is Updike that is the misogynist or whether he just likes stories where his lead character is one. Are they men of their time, or are they archetypes for all time? They are unloveable, rather grubby male leads with little to engage a female sympathy and although he is clearly a master of the craft I am not sure I want to delve any deeper.

[Elora Aarts · Rating 2 out of 5]

Na bijna een maand niet de tijd hebben om te lezen heb ik toch dit boek opgepakt omdat het zo kort was. Sommige verhalen vond ik wel leuk, en heel rauw en een beetje grim in hoe eerlijk ze zijn (maar hou daar wel van). Maar sommige verhalen? Vooral het laatste verhaal kantelde me echt. Echt een literaire ick. Ik dacht ook dat dit boek ouder zou zijn door bepaalde termen en woordkeuzes (aka zo politiek incorrect 😭) maar het is echt eng recent? Al heb ik soms wel genoten van deze verhalen, ik zou echt met een boog om deze auteur heenlopen. Gegarandeerd ga ik alles wat ik hier heb gelezen ook vergeten zijn in 2 dagen hahah

[Jonathan Garvey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fruity material. A little much in parts. I really enjoy reading Updike.

[Brian Mortimer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wondered if this was something of an obscure work as it doesn't seem to appear in any bibliography I've seen. All I have is that it was published in 1998. It's just five very short stories totalling just over 100 pages.
Similar to 'Couples' which I recently read, there is a preoccupation with sex and adultery. There is again a psychological angle though the writing style is looser and less convoluted with it being in the short story format. It is vaguely reminiscent of Katherine Mansfield in that it leaves the reader with hints and allusions to unravel by the end of each tale.
The stories seem to be set between the 50s and 70s, in that period of sexual and liberal revolution in the States. All the settings are in the American east coast in states like New Hampshire, New York and Virginia. The chronology moves around frequently with analepsis often indulged in. The narrative is rich with a wide vocabulary and peaks of irony. There are some sex scenes described erotically and with vulgarity. All the stories are different angles on the theme of adultery such as lost loves, open relationships, obsession, unrequited love and loveless sex(prostitution as an example). Though these angles bring some variety, they all share the theme of adultery, making the collection a little stifling. It's well written but the subject matter was of little interest or inspiration to me.
3.1 out of 5



SPOILERS

Natural Color
Third person narrative, this one is about a man seeing a woman he had an affair with decades ago. Maggie has very red hair, hence the title. She is walking in the town Frank and his wife moved to years ago. He avoids bumping into her. The narrative then gives the history of the affair.
Later, Anne, Frank's wife, mentions that she saw and spoke to Maggie. Similar to 'Couples' I found it unrealistic that a wife would openly discuss seeing a woman who she knew was once her husband's mistress. The story ends abruptly when Anne insinuates that Maggie must be dyeing her hair now and Frank argues that it's still her natural color, calling his wife a bitch.
The moral of the tale could be that we always tend to want what we don't have. Or it could be - in a similar vein - about living in the past, the way Frank still hasn't moved on and won't entertain the idea that Maggie might have changed(her hair greyed with age)and moved on. He loves her memory but doesn't really know who she is anymore. Ultimately Frank is a selfish and reprehensible character who I could only wish ill upon.
'He wondered. At the height of their affair their spouses had seemed small and pathetic beneath them, like field mice under a hawk, virtually too small to discuss.' (P13)

New York Girl
First person narrative, New York Girl is yet another tale about a man cheating on his wife. The narrator is a travelling salesman who involves himself with a curator in New York. The story opens by describing how New York feels like a new exciting world compared with Buffalo. I think this is the theme: love and sex is often mysterious and exciting at the beginning but eventually familiarity can breed contempt.
'Flowers and liquor - what else could I take Jane to clothe my gratitude? Sex paid for, however inadequately, was better - clearer, more naked, more of a rush - than married sex that we expect to sneak up on us for free.' (P23)
The affair peters out for this reason. Stan the narrator actually marries a former mistress, Althea and 15 years later sees Jane, the New York girl, again(similarly to story 1). Jane has a young son with her and has married someone she met in a similar fashion to how she met Stan. She asks him to be happy for her and leaves. The ending stings against the theme of new exciting affairs with the idea that love can be a constant and Stan missed that opportunity with her.

Licks of Love in the Heart of the Cold War
First Person again, this one is about a man who travels to Russia on a cultural-exchange program in the heart of the Cold War(just a few years after the Cuban Missile Crisis). He is a famous banjoist called Eddie Chester.
The tale - like many of the others - is not linear. This appears to be a trait of Updike. Eddie describes his landing in Moscow and getting in a limo but then takes us back to Washington before the flight where he meets a fan at a party after one of his briefings. Imogene Frye is well versed in Eddie's music and other players who they discuss. A waiter is referred to as a 'Negro' which was interchangeable with black back then and even by some today. I refuse to view this as racist which I've seen a reviewer dub this collection as. Anyway, they go to Imogene's apartment and sleep together. She seems infatuated and Eddie explains he is married.
Returning to the present in Russia, Eddie finds his hotel room and on his pillow is a letter from Imogene declaring her love for him. Eddie tours the Russian schools playing banjo and explaining the history of the music. Again on race, the students often queried him on the oppression of black people in the USA. Initially Eddie would explain that slavery was once universal and the civil rights movement would pave the way to equality. after he felt he was losing them on this he said it was a disgrace and America was working on changing that. The program's aim was to bridge divisions created by the Cold War and the tour visited many of what are now the former states of the USSR such as Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. On Eddie's return to Moscow there are more love letters from Imogene. Obsession and unrequited love are clear themes of this story.
'I couldn't do more than skim a page here and there - the handwriting got smaller and scrunchier and then would blossom out into some declaration of love printed in capitals and triple underlined.' (P53)
Eddie feels humiliated by these letters mixed in with those on business and those from his wife and children. He doesn't doubt that the KGB read everything. Returning to America, his mail is redirected to his home where his wife opens one of the love letters and finds out. This is where the story ends. Play with fire, and don't be surprised when you get burned.

The Women Who Got Away
First person, the titular story is about a married couple in an open relationship. The wife(Jeanne) dances with her lover as the narrator flirts with another woman. Frank, his wife's lover, had divorced recently. We go back in time again to when they were married. His wife, Winifred, wonders why the narrator hasn't tried having an affair with her to get back at their cheating spouses. Janet insists her husband walks the drunk Winifred home when Frank is out of town. There is a conspiracy amongst the locals to allow a promiscuous society, it seems.
'A rule of life in Pierce Junction demanded that you be especially nice to your lover's spouse - by no means an insincere observance, for the secret sharing did breed a tortuous, guilt-warmed gratitude to the everyday keeper of such a treasure.' (P63)
After walking Winifred to her house he returns home to find Frank, apparently just back from his trip. It seems they were trying to push their spouses together so they could be alone.
The narrator(Martin) talks with his lover, Maureen, about the incident who comes to the conclusion I made above. There is the mention of Nixon's downfall, placing the story in the mid-70s. Jeanne was hypocritically angry when she learnt of Martin's affair with Maureen, inducing her to tell Rodney, Maureen's husband who she then sleeps with. The nonchalant manner in which the couples discuss these matters is surprising but both couples eventually divorce too. Years pass. Maureen dies in a car crash. Still, there is the mention of Audrey, the lady Martin tries to flirt with at the story's opening. The woman he never slept with. Jeanne and Frank marry as does Martin a new woman, unnamed. Martin sees Audrey and watches from a store(similar to in Natural Color). She is holding hands with another woman: Winifred.

Transaction
This is the longest of the stories. First person, this time, a man away on business walks to his hotel at night and falls upon a group of prostitutes. Dates and places are censored giving the feel of a secret document. He takes a girl back to his hotel. Because this one is linear, more time is afforded to imagery, making this one of the better stories, easier to immerse oneself in.
The theme is of loveless sex. Though the man has paid for her 'services' he wonders who she is.
'She was his, something he had bought. Yet she was alive, a person, unpredictable, scarcely approachable indeed.' (P82)
Innocence is ironically introduced when a copy of Blake's 'Auguries of Innocence' - a present for his wife - falls from a package. Anna, the prostitute reveals she once worked in a library. While she freshens up the man reads a verse from The Lamb. Is or rather was Anna the Lamb to the slaughter? Or is the man, perhaps?
The man suffers 'brewer's droop' and pays for an extra hour. Little snippets of info are swapped but nothing too intimate. The descriptions of foreplay and sex that follow, are - like in 'Couples - erotic, poetic and vulgar.
There is an awkwardness afterwards and a lot to unpack. Updike creates a psychological framing with descriptive prose and free indirect discourse that perhaps makes this the more powerful of all the stories. I'd conceive this story as a 3.9 out of 5 but for the collection I give 3.1 out of 5

[lil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Romantic and sad stories … I loved his writing.

[KD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Breast shape =/= personality

There are definitely some pretty gross comments and ideas about women in this collection, which I definitely wouldn’t accept from an author publishing today - but overall I was (surprisingly!) able to enjoy the stories initially, until it all got too much. I have to admit that I was impressed by Updike’s style, like I often am by those early/mid century American greats - I find stories of suburban life melancholic and beautiful and have done for years now.

Each sentence is well written, it’s vivid, but it’s faux-depth. The writer writes women to try and convince the reader that he knew them, really knew them — but actually, each of his characters in these 5 short stories are just shaggers. No more no less. There is simply no depth in describing the size and perkiness of women’s breasts, the firmness of their “haunches”. This book doesn’t tell me about the human condition. It tells the story of the same (yes, it feels like the same central character over and over) man’s horny memories that he recounts in his mind as he ages. Pretty tedious stuff.

It’s so transparent and puerile really that it’s difficult to work up enough vitriol to hate him; I just sigh. Veiled misogyny feels worse to me. Overall, I think we can all agree that some perspectives simply don’t stand the test of time. I think I have read enough Updike for now.

[Olivia Loving · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unfortunately, it felt tedious to read, and I probably finished only because it was short. Also, I'm so used to reading books by women lately that anything else comes off as misogynistic, which this might partially be. It is a book about adultery, but still. None of the characters seemed original and resembled each other too much for the book to feel like a necessary read. (The main reason I don't read short stories except by experts like Lorrie Moore and Jhumpa Lahiri).

[latner3 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Five stories about adultery written with Updike's usual craftsmanship.Liked the stories 'Licks of Love in the Heart of the Cold War' for me the best of the five.The other four are still worth reading.

[Zoe · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I wanted to read about bitter affairs and alienated families I’d just look to my own 😂

If there was another short story in this collection I could 100% tell you what it was about

Maybe that’s the point…

At least I no longer have any urge to pick up and finish Rabbit, Run

[Georgie Wardall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not to tear down my fellow women or anything, but I feel that the reviews disparaging Updike as a misogynist have missed the point. First, this viewpoint rests on the assumption that a writer and his main characters are one entity. It disenfranchises Updike as a writer to assume he has no critical awareness of his characters and plays no active part in their craftmanship. Writers write intentionally; his characters didn’t just appear fully formed out of his subconscious, and it’s clear from reading The Women Who Got Away that Updike writes intentionally down to the word, so to suggest that his misogynist protagonists represent him is a low-blow and uncritical.

Second, it is useless to give a piece of writing from a wholly different social climate a reading intent on modern values. Updike dissects the psyche of middle-class white American suburbia in the 1950s-70s, and when you refuse to get down from your 2020s moral high-horse of dismissing characters with dated social ideas, the argument and criticism Updike is making is lost. Updike’s point is not that women ought to be sexual objects to miserable middle-class men but that the whole organism of life in middle-class suburbia is broken. Husbands and wives have unfulfilling love affairs for something to distract them from their unfulfilling marriages and parenthood and once the sex is over, they feel looming the unbearable knowledge that their lives are completely meaningless. Middle-class suburbia is a trap all Updike’s characters are trying to escape. The tragedy comes from the irony, that the long fought-for American Dream is the millstone around all our characters’ necks. The sense is that the misogyny is part of the problem, separating men and women, isolating them in their constant loathing and spiteful resentment. Updike has been criticised more widely for the limited roles his female characters operate in, but Updike writes with only disapprobation of the way things are working, and the repetitive, limited lives of all the characters, at least in this short story collection, is part of the criticism. As for the racism, Updike does fall down on that one – the description of the negress in ‘Transaction’ is uncomfortable and certainly a shortcoming of the period rather than a curated choice. But to refuse to credit something with generational bias is parochial and short-sighted – there is so much more to get out of these short stories than indignation at the way things were.

[CaitlynK · Rating 3 out of 5]

"We came down on the big arc over Gander and Nova Scotia and, five miles up, I could see New York from hundreds of miles away, a little blur of light in the cold plastic oval of the plane window. It grew and grew, like a fish I was pulling in. My cheek got cold against the plastic as I pressed to keep it in view, a little spot on the invisible surface of the earth like a nebula, like a dust mouse, only glowing, the fuzzy center of our American dream."

Not my favorite collection ever - altogether too many men ducking into stores to avoid ex-lovers, and the narrators all felt more than vaguely similar - but a decent introduction to Updike nonetheless.

[Ikra · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are times when I wonder why I picked up a certain book. All these short stories are about adultery and the problems in relationships and marriages. Having read Paulo Coehlo’s Adultery, I found this book quite lacking in expressing what goes on in the head of a person while having an affair. I’m not sure if it was the authors intention to make the whole affair so tedious and dreary or if he’s just a bit of a chauvinist. I find Coehlo’s expression much more engaging. Updike just leaves one a bit irritated, wondering what was even the point of the whole thing.

[M. · Rating 1 out of 5]

It occurred to him, as his blood pounded, that sex has very little to do with kindness.

Everyone is cheating on each other left and right. I liked the New York Girl story a lot, with “I doubt whether Jeffrey really got the hang of common denominators, but I want to think that to the day she dies Jane can handle chopsticks because of me.”
But most of this collection was not fun to read. Nobody felt interesting enough to want to read about them.

[Sarah Jackson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Some stories in this collection were better than others. One or two were difficult to read because, I felt, they were badly written. Given this is in the penguin top 20 romantic novels, it was disappointing.

[Melanie Grace · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely disgusting book with no purpose other than to justify immoral behavior. The only redeeming trait is the well written prose. Too bad its wasted on such crummy subject material. The fact that this man is considered one of the greats deeply concerns me.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nicely written collection of short stories. But they were too short!

[Terpsichore Savvala · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautifully written, but it does make you hate Updike.

[Als · Rating 4 out of 5]

Every chapters taught me very important subtle facets of womanhood that I’d never get so easily these days , although having identified with the women in 3 out of 5 chapters in the book...

[Olena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poignant realistic stories, would have been a 5 if not for the last one.

[Diogo Canastreiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

The rest of the book is pretty meh, but the last story is pure gold.

[Joel Ridley · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great if you love reading about infidelity

[tai · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF.

[Mallory (The Local Muse) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This and more @ The Local Muse:
The Women Who Got Away is a collection of short stories by John Updike complied into this Penguin Great Loves edition. I picked up quite a few of these on Book depository a year-or-so ago because I loved the concept and the beautiful pocket size designs and I thought it was about time I actually read them.

This collection included five short stories by Updike that fit the theme of the title, women who got away. All five stories are told by a (usually) nameless male narrator lamenting on his mistress that has gotten away. I picked this up because A&P by Updike( you can read it here; it's very short) is one of my favorite short stories of all time, and one that I have studied and written papers on many times before, so I was looking to read more of his works. This was a quick read that I really enjoyed! I'm now interested in picking up some of Updike's longer fiction, but I'm not sure where to start.

Despite these stories having very similar narrators and themes, the stories were not monotonous or boring. Updike is able to create such real and complex characters in such a short amount of words that even the shortest of his stories feel complete and complex. Updike writes about the mundane and the everyday, but he is able to capture humanity and emotion so well, that it feels like you are witness to intimate details and private moments in someone else's life. I would say that the title story was my favorite, but I enjoyed the other four stories as well. While I don't think these stories are Updike's best work, I do think this would serve as a good introduction to Updike's writing style if you are interested in jumping into his works. I would recommend starting with A&P before these stories though.