![]() ![]() "synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title. 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. A natural beauty who learns to use her feminine wiles with great success in a society where doing so is not only acceptable but expected, Esther charms young men and old as she pursues a career. 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. ![]() Teddy has a daughter, Esther, who becomes a movie star, an object of worship, an All-American goddess. Altars, often unadorned during the penitential Lenten season, will be decked with fragrant Easter lilies as Christians around the world join in the festival. 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. Rent In the Beauty of the Lilies 1st edition (978-0449911211) today, or search our site for other textbooks by John Updike. ![]() ![]() 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. ![]()
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