The subject of adultery is seldom missing from Updike's twelve earlier novels. The success of Couples in 1968 was the occasion for Updike's first appearance on the cover of Time. Adultery and its consequences remain central in the series of novels from Rabbit, Run (1960) to Rabbit at Rest (1990), and the subject even receives a supernatural treatment in The Witches of Eastwick (1984). Updike has explored numerous points of view for adultery in his fiction, but lately, in The Witches of Eastwick and now more thoroughly in S., he has presented the subject from a female perspective, or, some contend, a caricature of such a perspective.

Updike's fascination with Hawthorne's fiction is apparent in much of his recent work. It was the topic of his 1979 lecture at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and Hawthorne was again on Updike's mind when he wrote about witchcraft and adultery in...