num_pages: 288
description: The story of S. concerns Sarah Worth, a latter-day Hester Prynne who has become enamored of a Hindu religious leader called the Arhat. A New Englander, she goes west to join his commune in Arizona, and there mingles with the other sannyasins (pilgrims) in the difficult attempt to subdue ego and achieve moksha (salvation, release from illusion).John Updike’s thirteenth novel takes the form of letters and tapes that his forty-two-year-old heroine dispatches, to her husband, her mother, her daughter, her brother, her hairdresser, her psychiatrist, her dentist, and others as she strives to keep her old world in order while creating for herself a new one. This is Hester’s version of the triangle set forth in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter; it is also a meditation upon American womanhood, a romance, and a religious comedy.
language: English
title: S.
titlecomplete: S.
characters: Sarah P. Worth, Arhat
genres: 20th Century, Literature, American, Literary Fiction, Eastern Philosophy, Novels, Modern, Religion, Fiction, Contemporary
ratings_count: 1350
places: The United States of America, Arizona
publisher: Knopf