{"product_id":"of-the-farm-9780345468222","title":"Of the Farm","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"A small masterpiece . . . With\u003ci\u003e Of the Farm\u003c\/i\u003e, John Updike has achieved a sureness of touch, a suppleness of style, and a subtlety of vision that is gained by few writers of fi ction.\"--\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this short novel, Joey Robinson, a thirty-five-year-old New Yorker, describes a visit he makes, with his second wife and eleven-year-old stepson, to the Pennsylvania farm where he grew up and where his aging mother now lives alone. For three days, a quartet of voices explores the air, making confessions, seeking alignments, quarreling, pleading, and pardoning. They are not entirely alone: ghosts (fathers, lovers, children) press upon them, as do phantoms from the near future (nurses, lawyers, land developers). \u003ci\u003eOf the Farm \u003c\/i\u003econcerns the places people choose to live their lives, and the strategies they use to stand their ground.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\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.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Random House Trade","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50491688255762,"sku":"9780345468222","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_669412bd-0a8e-44bc-b9b2-9a8840117dc3.jpg?v=1730549648","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/of-the-farm-9780345468222","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}