The Poorhouse Fair: A Novel

Brilliant … Here is the conflict of real ideas; of real personalities; here is a work of intellectual imagination and great charity. The Poorhouse Fair is a work of art. -The New York Times Book Review

The hero of John Updike’s first novel, published when the author was twenty-six, is ninety-four-year-old John Hook, a dying man who yet refuses to be dominated. His world is a poorhouse-a county home for the aged and infirm-overseen by Stephen Conner, a righteous young man who considers it his duty to know what is best for others. The action of the novel unfolds over a single summer’s day, the day of the poorhouse’s annual fair, a day of escalating tensions between Conner and the rebellious Hook. Its climax is a contest between progress and tradition, benevolence and pride, reason and faith.

Praise for The Poorhouse Fair

A first novel of rare precision and real merit … a rich poorhouse indeed. -Newsweek

Turning on a narrow plot of ground, it achieves the rarity of bounded, native truth, and comes forth as microcosm. -Commonweal