Dyke Hendrickson, writing for the Newburyport Daily News, listened to the audio-book version of Adam Begley’s biography of John Updike, who lived in Boston’s North Shore area for much of his adult life, and had a list of observations about the “brilliant, productive writer” who lived in Ipswich and Beverly Farms, and Begley, whose “research was exhaustive but his prose is energizing.”

“Begley biography brings alive John Updike, life on North Shore”

You need to be a subscriber to access the full article, but Hendrickson, who says he’s a friend of Michael Updike,  lists two take-aways from the Begley bio that you don’t need to pay to read:

—”Unlike most writers, Updike was a success from the start”

—”His writing was remarkably autobiographical. If Updike ran into a hedge with his auto or walked into the bedroom of a neighborhood volleyball wife, the reader was likely to hear about it.”