Ten couples live in Tarbox, an out-of-the-way New England town. Well-to-do, 35-ish, they form an exclusive, competitive group. Skiing, entertaining, playing with word-games … and sex. Discreetly, tentatively changing partners, they conduct their rituals under the baleful eye of their self-appointed ringmaster, Freddy Thorne.

          But when Piet Hanema and Foxy Whitman have an affair, they reject expediency and caution. For once, the other unshockable couples are deeply shocked … and Tarbox claims its first sacrificial victims.

          John Updike’s searching, poetic treatment of the couples’ involvement and aberrations serves to expose the life of a community with astonishing particularity. In every sense, he gives us the anatomy of a generation.