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Roger's Version
Roger's Version
Nov 29, 2025 12:04 PM

Author:John Updike,John Banville

Roger's Version

Middle-aged, brilliant and bored, Roger Lambert is a professor of Divinity at a New England university. Firmly convinced that religious belief can only justified by recourse to pure faith, he is dismissive when visited by a gangling student who claims, with evangelical zeal, that computer technology is on the brink of proving the existence of God. But when his unhappy wife flings herself into an affair with the younger man, and Roger's faith in his own placid life is thrown into question. With his marriage close to collapse, he finds himself increasingly drawn to his own half-niece, the nineteen-year-old Verna, in this cunning and comic exploration of religion, uncertainty and passion.

Reviews

Provides equal does of sex and repression in war-torn Britain with panache and pace

—— The Times

A very good book indeed...rich in detail, careful and subtle in observation, mature in judgement

—— Susan Hill

Extraordinarily accomplished and fast-moving

—— Financial Times

It's hard to overpraise Mary Wesley's novel...so tingling and spry with life that put a mirror to the book and I'll almost swear it will mist over with the breath of the five young cousins

—— The Times

A reading experience that evokes contemporary China with absurdist exactitude

—— Financial Times

Some of the best passages are, like this, sensuous and plainly descriptive. There is a fantastic mini-essay on the aphrodisiac qualities of the sea cucumber

—— Toby Litt , Guardian

Well-crafted, often hilarious and surreal

—— Big Issue

An amusing, charming read with a satirical edge

—— Metro
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