{"product_id":"in-the-beauty-of-the-lilies-paperback","title":"In the Beauty of the Lilies - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eJohn Updike\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eIn the Beauty of the Lilies\u003c\/i\u003e 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eFront Jacket\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eIT 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. \u003cbr\u003e--Miami Herald \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"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.\" \u003cbr\u003e--The New York Times \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"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.\" \u003cbr\u003e--The Boston Globe \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"AWESOME . . . Updike's genius, his place beside Hawthorne and Nabokov have never been more assured, or chilling.\" \u003cbr\u003e--The New Yorker \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"POWERFUL.\" \u003cbr\u003e--The Atlanta Journal Constitution\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eJohn Updike\u003c\/b\u003e 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 \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e. 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 576\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.92 x 8.25 x 5.51 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e January 21, 1997\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eAward:\u003c\/strong\u003e Ambassador Book Awards (1997)\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51755964006688,"sku":"9780449911211","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0974\/9764\/5344\/files\/339939167e49c4c0b44c4a2c60252ba8.webp?v=1780071810","url":"https:\/\/ebocreations.com\/products\/in-the-beauty-of-the-lilies-paperback","provider":"The E-Book Oasis LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}