In the beauty of the lilies6/27/2023 The first section, set mainly in Paterson, New Jersey, is centered on Clarence Wilmot, a minister in his forties who abruptly loses his faith one very hot afternoon shortly before a dinner party. In charting the fortunes of an American family through some 80 years, the author showed how dreams, habits and predilections are handed down generation to generation, parent to child, even as he created a kaleidoscopic portrait of this country from its nervous entry into the 20th century to its stumbling approach to the millennium." Part I Updike’s stunning and much underestimated 1996 epic, ‘In the Beauty of the Lilies,’ tackled an even wider swath of history. In her appraisal of Updike's work New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani wrote: "Mr. a book that forces us to reassess the American Dream.” Summary īeginning in 1910 and ending in 1990, the novel covers four generations of the Wilmot family, tying its fortunes to both the decline of the Christian faith and the rise of Hollywood in twentieth century America. In The New York Times, critic Michiko Kakutani called the work “dazzling. It takes its title from a line of the abolitionist song " The Battle Hymn of the Republic." The novel received the 1997 Ambassador Book Award for Fiction. In the Beauty of the Lilies is a 1996 novel by John Updike.
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