The Centaur by John Updike: book review

The Centaur (1963) is set in rural Pennsylvania (the author’s home region), near Alton, in two time periods: the 1940s and the 1960s.

John Updike (1932-2009) is the author of Rabbit, Run (of the Rabbit series) and the Witches of Eastwick (1984). One of America’s finest authors, I thought it was time to revisit his works.

The Centaur begins in 1947 with George Caldwell, a science teacher at Olinger High School. He is teaching astronomy when, in the unruly classroom, a student shoots him in the ankle with an arrow.

In Greek mythology, Peleus entrusts Chiron the Centaur to look after his son Achilles. Chiron the Centaur is a half-man, half-horse creature who is a teacher and youth-nurturer. Chiron dies from an arrow to the ankle. During the Trojan War, Paris shoots Achilles in the heel with an arrow – some versions say that Achilles was injured and others say that he died. The heel, therefore, is a metaphor for a person’s weakness. In this novel, George is the teacher, the Centaur.

George is pessimistic and depressive, ‘plagued’ by the early death of his father. George’s son, Peter, is a bit more optimistic, but he is ‘plagued’ with a bad case of psoriasis, leaving him itchy, red, and scaly.

At age 50, George is sick and fearful of dying. George decides to take a road trip with his son. Getting out of their rural community, with freedom in the air, George and Peter pick up a hitchhiker. Then they are stuck in a snow blizzard for three days when their old Buick breaks down.

The novel shifts back and forth in time and in the perspective of the writer, from the third person and first person and back again. This depicts time as an erosional agent. It is also an allusion to the astronomical phenomenon ‘red shift’ in which stars appear to be retreating at a speed proportional to their distance from Earth.

The Centaur is about three generations of male Caldwells – with George the pivotal point. But it is best for its father-son bonding scene during the blizzard.

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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