In the Beauty of the Lilies

Jacket Description/Flap: "IT WILL LEAVE YOU STUNNED AND BREATHLESS. . . . With grand ambition, [Updike] not only tracks the fortunes and falls of an American family through four generations and eight decades but also creates a shimmering, celluloid portrait of the whole century as viewed through the metaphor of the movies." --Miami Herald "AN IMPORTANT AND IMPRESSIVE NOVEL: a novel that not only shows how we live today, but also how we got there. . . . A book that forces us to reassess the American Dream and the crucial role that faith (and the longing for faith) has played in shaping the national soul." --The New York Times "STIRRING AND CAPTIVATING AND BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN . . . [This] new novel displays a depth and a narrative confidence that make one sigh with sweet anticipation. This is the Updike of the Rabbit books, who can take you uphill and down with his grace of vision, his gossamer language, and his merciful, ironic glance at the misery of the human condition." --The Boston Globe "AWESOME . . . Updike's genius, his place beside Hawthorne and Nabokov have never been more assured, or chilling." --The New Yorker "POWERFUL." --The Atlanta Journal ConstitutionBiographical Note: 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. Review Quotes: "Dazzling . . . a book that forces us to reassess the American Dream and the crucial role that faith (and the longing for faith) have played in shaping the national soul."--"The New York Times" "Stirring and captivating and beautifully written . . . This is the Updike of the Rabbit books, who can take you uphill and down with his grace of vision, his gossamer language, and his merciful, ironic glance at the misery of the human condition."--"The Boston Globe""Updike's genius, his place beside Hawthorne and Nabokov have never been more assured."--George Steiner, "The New Yorker"Publisher Marketing: John Updike's seventeenth novel begins in 1910, and traces God's relation to four generations of an American family, beginning with Clarence Wilmot, a Presbyterian clergyman in Paterson, New Jersey. He loses his faith, and becomes an encyclopedia salesman and a motion-picture addict. The remainder of Clarence's family moves to the small town of Basingstoke, Delaware, where his cautious son, Teddy, becomes a mailman. Faithless himself, Teddy marries a good Methodist girl and begets Esther, whose prayers are always answered; she becomes an object of worship, a twentieth-century goddess. Her neglected son, Clark, makes his way back to the fiery fundamentals of Protestant piety. The novel ends in 1990, in Lower Branch, Colorado, and on television. Taking its title from the "Battle-Hymn of the Republic, " In the Beauty of the Lilies spins one saga, one wandering tapestry thread, of the American Century. Publisher Marketing: "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. Review Citations:

New York Times 02/16/1997 pg. 32 (EAN 9780449911211, Paperback)

Publishers Weekly 11/11/1996 (EAN 9780449911211, Paperback)

Entertainment Weekly 02/13/2009 pg. 60 (EAN 9780449911211, Paperback)

Library Journal Prepub Alert 09/01/1995 pg. 152 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover)

Publishers Weekly 11/13/1995 pg. 48 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover) - *Starred Review

Kirkus Reviews 11/01/1995 pg. 1526 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover) - *Starred Review

Library Journal 12/01/1995 pg. 160 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover) - *Starred Review

Booklist 11/15/1995 pg. 515 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover) - *Starred Review

New York Times 01/28/1996 pg. 9 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover)

New York Times 06/16/1996 pg. 34 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover)

NY Times Notable Bks of Year 01/01/1996 pg. 80 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover)

Wilson Senior High Core Col 01/01/1996 pg. 90 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover)

Booklist Editors Choice/Adult 01/01/1997 pg. 761 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/1996 pg. 76 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2000 pg. 661 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover)

Library Journal 09/01/1995 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2006 pg. 942 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2010 pg. 941 (EAN 9780679446408, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Updike, John John Updike's novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal. He died of lung cancer in 2009, at age 75.