Marc Chacksfield has recommended “The books that will actually make you laugh: The funniest novels ever written”—a list published on shortlist.com. And one of Updike’s novels tickled his funnybone: The Witches of Eastwick (1984).
Of Witches, Chacksfield wrote, “The big screen adaptation is naturally hilarious, but Updike’s original source material is a wonderful exercise in satire. Three women in the Rhode Island town of Eastwick acquire witch-like powers after being spurned by their husbands. Swearing to wreak vengeance, they run amok until the mysterious appearance of Darryl Van Horne. What follows is high farce and social satire rolled into one. Mischievous doesn’t begin to cover it.”
Of course, there’s no shortage of humor in Updike, whether you tag along with his Jewish alter ego Henry Bech in three novels, savor the satire of American overconsumption in The Coup, or chuckle over Updike’s minister in A Month of Sundays who is sent to a retreat as a curative for his penchant of sexually fleecing his flock.