onegoodmove

John Updike, never one to worry about plot and action doesn't disappoint in his latest, Seek My Face. What he does do, is what he has always done best, paint pictures with words. His sentences are exquisite.

The toilet down the hall flushes: Kathryn rising from the seat, having patted her oily dark cleft with a pad of tissue. This downstairs water closet sometimes keeps running, the stopper balancing upright on its hinge and failing to fall, so that the water runs without filling the porcelain box and making the ball cock rise and shut off the flow. Hope listens for the telltale change of pitch in the toilet's murmur that signals a fallen stopper and a seal. She imagines she hears it, through the rush of an open faucet: Kathryn washing her hands. Had hope set out a clean hand towel? The other woman emerges with the curious stalking gait of hers, as if walking in her boots on uneven stepping-stones, a praying mantis gait. Hope wonders if she should follow the younger woman's example but foresees that the seat will be warm, an uncanny undesired intimacy, and decides she can wait. The tea will want out in an hour or less.

The story is one of art, aging, and memory told through the voice of Hope Chafetz a painter in her own right and the wife of several icons of American Art. Hope's character and that of her first husband are loosely based on Jackson Pollock and his wife Lee Krasener. Andy Warhol makes an appearance as the second husband. Hope at seventy-nine grants an interview to Kathryn a New York journalist. The setting Hope's home, the place central Vermont, the time the spring of 2001. It is a story of Hope's life as a painter and her love affair with the art world. Updike's juxtaposition of the youthful interviewer and the older Hope was particularly well done. Art lovers will enjoy this fictionalized trip through American Art History, but for me it was the words. I recently read/listened to Harlen Coben's Gone for Good, a mystery. The contrast between that writing and Updikes is stark. Coben's cliches brought derision while Seek my Face delighted with fresh metaphors, new descriptions, a world brought to life. This was not my favorite Updike, but I never regret reading one of his novels, and this was no exception.