--- product_id: 56848807 title: "The Centaur" brand: "john updike" price: "€ 38.56" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.gr/products/56848807-the-centaur store_origin: GR region: Greece --- # The Centaur **Brand:** john updike **Price:** € 38.56 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Centaur by john updike - **How much does it cost?** € 38.56 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.gr](https://www.desertcart.gr/products/56848807-the-centaur) ## Best For - john updike enthusiasts ## Why This Product - Trusted john updike brand quality - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description The Centaur ## Images ![The Centaur - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41SE6ALYn5L.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐ This one puzzles me. *by E***R on Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2014* I read this book about three weeks ago; so these are my lasting impressions so to speak. This is my first time reading an Updike novel and I haven't taken the time to learn much about him, except to know that he's highly regarded. Nevertheless, halfway through I simply wanted to get it over with. The central character is a high school general science teacher whose class apparently loves him and shows it by shooting a broad tip hunting arrow through his ankle. How this happened is never explained. This is the opening scene: the teacher hobbling down the hall, not to the medical office or to get someone to take him to an emergency room, but to his friendly garage mechanic who uses an acetylene torch to cut through the metal shaft and extract it. I don't remember that he ever went to the doctor at all, except to confirm a previous diagnosis that he is dying, something that he seems to want to believe. What happened to the four steps that begin with denial, anger, et seq? He's so down on himself that he can't realize how good he really is.There is one hilarious passage that made me laugh out loud and think hopefully that we were into a Catch 22 laugheroo; but no such luck. Instead we get some crazy stuff. Here's a guy so lacking in backbone that his wife persuades him to leave an adequate house in the small town where he teaches and move the family to a rundown farm a half hour drive from his teaching job. It's a farm house where they don't even have indoor plumbing. This commute he makes daily in an old car that has an almost dead battery and you guessed it, the battery is dead on the very day that he just has to be at school on time. He pushes it down a hill to get it started (I did this more than a few times in high school, so it brought back memories, but when it happens again later on in the story it's once too often). But does he buy a new battery? No, he can't because on a teacher's pay he doesn't have two nickels to rub together.Enter his high school sophomore son, a good kid, actually a very good kid, whose principal fault is an obsession with a freshman girl whose body he is determined to explore in some of her prohibited zones. I could have done without that, but maybe I shouldn't speak for other readers. OK, the kid has more street smarts than his dad. Dad, why don't we just buy a new battery? Why are we trying to get home in a blizzard when we could stay in town with friends? (They ultimately have to when the car can't make it up a snowy hill and they leave it in a drift. Oh, I forgot to mention, the battery was dead when they tried to start out on this ill-fated trip and I forget the weird way that they got it started this time.)There is some poetic prose now and then. A tangle with the school superintendent. Some sexual mischief (not involving our teacher). Some allusions to Greek mythology. It would have helped if I had remembered a little more from whatever schooling I had on Zeus,Apollo, and their friends. Whatever was Mr. Updike's purpose, maybe that's why I missed it. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Man, I forgot how great this novel is *by P***G on Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2021* Updike is my jam. Even though he has been mostly forgotten since his death and has been heaped in the mid to late 20th Century white guy corner, he still deserves to be read. He loves writing - recording thoughts about love, family, sex and death and middle class America. This is a wonderful book and was written a decade before the term Magical Realism became a thing. Also, read The Coup, Couples and The Witches of Eastwick. He is more than just his Rabbit novels.This Fawcett paperback was on old library copy and I love each musty, yellow page and small print. It's 1972 all over again or whenever the heck this was reissued. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A young novelist's capstone *by D***A on Reviewed in the United States on December 1, 2017* Riotously creative, at times almost disorientingly so, Updike envisions the relationship between a boy and his father, dramatized in a thread of commonplace events, as a mythical Greek epic. The effect is to elevate and eternalize the ordinary, to cast the mundane in the context of the heroic, and finally, to lay bare our inability to rationalize our own existence. This is a self-consciously artistic work, and Updike's astonishing ability to capture the subtlest experiences and observations in his prose sometimes seems to take on a life of its own. Yet, those who are willing to be patient, if not indulgent, and read this prose as though it were poetry -- which it is -- will be richly rewarded, and, at the same time, mightily entertained. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.gr/products/56848807-the-centaur](https://www.desertcart.gr/products/56848807-the-centaur) --- *Product available on Desertcart Greece* *Store origin: GR* *Last updated: 2026-05-21*