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In the Beauty of the Lilies

A Novel

A Novel

A Novel

By John Updike

By John Updike

By John Updike

By John Updike

By John Updike

By John Updike

Best Seller
Paperback $16.00

Jan 21, 1997 | 576 Pages

Ebook $11.99

Jul 22, 2009 | 576 Pages

Audiobook Download $25.00

Nov 19, 2019 | 900 Minutes

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    In the Beauty of the Lilies by John Updike
    Paperback
    Jan 21, 1997 | 576 Pages
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    • Paperback $16.00

      Jan 21, 1997 | 576 Pages

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    • Ebook $11.99

      Jul 22, 2009 | 576 Pages

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    About In the Beauty of the Lilies

    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.

    About In the Beauty of the Lilies

    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.

    About In the Beauty of the Lilies

    Faith ultimately bursts into flame as Updike’s major new novel, charting the lives of one family through four generations, shows readers an America whose dream of perfection is translated into an obsession with God and the Moving Picture. Paterson, New Jersey, 1910: When a Presbyterian minister suddenly loses his faith and leaves the pulpit to become a salesman, he becomes a movie addict as well.

    Read An Excerpt

    Read An Excerpt

    Also by John Updike

    Selected Poems
    Olinger Stories
    S.
    Buchanan Dying
    Hugging the Shore
    See all books by John Updike

    Also by John Updike

    Selected Poems
    Olinger Stories
    S.
    Buchanan Dying
    Hugging the Shore
    See all books by John Updike

    Also by John Updike

    Selected Poems
    Olinger Stories
    S.
    Buchanan Dying
    Hugging the Shore
    See all books by John Updike

    About John Updike

    JOHN UPDIKE is the author of more than sixty books, eight of them collections of poetry. His novels won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle, and the William Dean Howells Medal of the American… More about John Updike

    About John Updike

    JOHN UPDIKE is the author of more than sixty books, eight of them collections of poetry. His novels won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle, and the William Dean Howells Medal of the American… More about John Updike

    About John Updike

    JOHN UPDIKE is the author of more than sixty books, eight of them collections of poetry. His novels won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle, and the William Dean Howells Medal of the American… More about John Updike

    Product Details

    Category: Literary Fiction

    Paperback | $16.00
    Published by Random House Trade Paperbacks
    Jan 21, 1997 | 576 Pages | 5-1/2 x 8-1/4 | ISBN 9780449911211

    Category: Literary Fiction

    Ebook | $11.99
    Published by Random House
    Jul 22, 2009 | 576 Pages | ISBN 9780307421333

    Category: Literary Fiction | Audiobooks

    Audiobook Download | $25.00
    Published by Random House Audio
    Nov 19, 2019 | 900 Minutes | ISBN 9780593150085

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    Praise

    “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

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