S. Paperback - 1996

From the jacket flap

S. is Sarah Worth -- doctor's wife, North Shore matron, loving mother, and now (suddenly!) ardent follower of a Hindu religious leader known as the Arhat. As this brilliant and very funny novel opens, Sarah is fleeing the confinement of her suburban life to become a sannyasin (pilgrim) at her guru's Arizona ashram.
In the letters and audiocassettes that Sarah sends to her husband, daughter, mother, brother, best friend -- to her psychiatrist and her hairdresser and her dentist -- master novelist John Updike gives us a witty comedy of manners, a biting satire of life on a religious commune, and the story -- deep and true -- of an American woman in search of herself.

Media reviews

“One of Updike’s lightest, funniest, and slyest fictions—a comedy about the sneaky economies of the spirit.”—The New Yorker
 
“This comedy of Brahmin manners is . . . a mercilessly funny account of life in a religious commune. Some would say that Sarah’s flight to self-discovery is strictly in the best Puritan tradition.”—The Washington Post Book World
 
“A spiritual adventure story . . . Updike fully inhabits his imperfect matron. Her voice, which can sweep from the heights of religious fluff to the swamps of bathos in astonishing feats of non sequitur, is a wonderful comic invention.”—Newsweek