Seek My Face Audiobook By John Updike cover art

Seek My Face

A Novel

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30-day trial. Cancel anytime
Try for $0.00
More purchase options
Buy for $17.96

Buy for $17.96

A riveting novel that takes place in one day about an elderly painter and the New Yorker interviewing her—from one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series. • “A brief novel of deep feeling.”—Time

On a day that contains much conversation and some rain, the seventy-eight-year-old painter Hope Chafetz, who in the course of her eventful life has been Hope Ouderkirk, Hope McCoy, and Hope Holloway, answers questions put to her by a New York interviewer named Kathryn, and recapitulates, through the story of her own career, the triumphant, poignant saga of postwar American art. In the evolving relation between the two women, the interviewer and interviewee move in and out of the roles of daughter and mother, therapist and patient, predator and prey, supplicant and idol. The scene is central Vermont; the time is the early spring of 2001. Literary Fiction Fiction Psychological Genre Fiction Classics Women's Fiction World Literature

Critic reviews

“A brief novel of deep feeling . . . What you recall is that reading Updike has always provided the pleasures you hoped were in store when you went through the trouble of learning to read.”—Time

“The premise of Seek My Face is clean and powerful, like a canvas by Barnett Newman. . . . Swirled over [it] is John Updike’s superabundant prose, dazzling strings of looping sentences that wrap these two women in glittering constellations of words.”—The New York Observer

“A rewarding new novel from our reigning master of surprise, the last sequence of which is surpassing in its beauty.”—San Francisco Chronicle
All stars
Most relevant
This is my first Updike. I’m amazed at his way with words—so quotable.

I enjoyed the insights into the art world over the decades, some of which I lived through, barely noticing the vast canvases the author seems to effortlessly absorb. I need to rediscover, and his story inspired that adventure.

I don’t always like the people, their self-aggrandizement and self-loathing. But they are interesting.

Walker is a wonderful performer. She captures the essence of Updike’s people, and addd her own pungent emotion.

I’ll find some more Updike. You can’t beat great writing.

Eloquence and reflection

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Well written beautifully narrated. A very good listen.

Better than 90% of the pap that passes for writing

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
A crashing bore! Certainly not up to Updyke?s usual.

Seek My Face

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.