The Coup attracted my interest because of its subject matter. Writing about the Sahel, I thought, might help transform the muffled glories of Updike's ornate prose into something leaner, or lend a gravity to his religious impulses that neither Skeeter nor the author's suburban adulterers had ever done. At times in The Coup that almost seems what Updike himself has in mind….

Nobody would deny Updike's expository gifts, despite the occasional sentence that defies understanding. When it comes to such novelistic matters as plot, character and dialogue, however, his verbosity seems to overwhelm his judgment. Sentences and whole paragraphs detach themselves from the dramatic logic of the book until it can scarcely be said after a time to have one. Consider Kutunda, an illiterate, barefooted nomadic wench whom dictator Ellelloû discovers on a tour of the drought-stricken northern part of the country while disguised as a beggar…. As...