This was my first read of John Updike. Everyone who heard that I was reading it said that they'd read it when they were a teenager, and all they remembered was how 'saucy' it was. And it is, there's quite a bit of literary sex, and philandering. I did really enjoy the writing, Updike's amazing use of language to describe places and people, but it's also a very dense book, sometimes so heavy going, so full to the brim with language, that I wanted to get to the end, and now I feel the need for something lighter and shorter. I sometimes had some problems with how articulate and emotionally intelligent every single character was, but then I would forgive Updike this because it allowed his wonderful writing to just flow through my brain. The ending was also odd, just a quick summing up of all ten main over two pages, as if even Updike had had enough of them.