When I think about Richard Russo's latest novel, "That Old Cape Magic" (2009, Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, 272 pp., $25.95), one word comes to mind - annoying. It fell far from the mark, in my opinon, for the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "Empire Falls."

I only started to be less annoyed and actually begin to like the book and its protaganist, Jack Griffin, about two-thirds of the way through. That was when he and his wife separated and Griffin seemed to regain some humility. The pages preceding described ad nauseum Griffin's unhappiness with himself and his marriage.

True to her name, Griffin's wife, Joy, always looks on the bright side of their outwardly successful life, their well-adjusted daughter. Griffin wallows in doom and gloom, haunted by his own parents' seemingly unhappy union. It's as if he can't see the good in his life. His wife, his daughter, his career.

That's where it became tedious for me. Much of the book was about the marital argument. Who's right? Who's wrong? Who can do the most damage to the other without even trying? Ugh.

The novel begins and ends with weddings - one on Cape Cod and the second on the coast of Maine - just a year apart. One dead parent accompanies Griffin via ashes in an urn is his trunk to the first, another to the second.

Cape Cod was the stuff of Griffin's parents dreams. The family would summer there in rental homes, never able to afford to buy a place in their shangri-la. They would spend summers poring over real estate books, putting the properties they surveyed into two groups: "Can't Afford It" and "Wouldn't Have it as a Gift." Their dream was unattainable.

Griffin's parents taught college English and history courses at a midwest college, never quite making it to the bigtime - the Ivy League, and never seeming to have enough money to follow their dream of moving to the Cape fulltime. Their marriage crumbles late in their lives. Following her death, Griffin paints his mother as the unhappy voice in his head. Griffin unwittingly repeats his parents' mistakes in his own life.

More than once, when Griffin was hearing his dead mother's commentary in his head, I was reminded of Norman Bates being haunted by his mother's voice. I found the allusion creepy rather than comic, as the Washington Post's book reviewer seemed to find it: "It's a sign of Russo's comic genius that these two hilariously acerbic parents - one on the phone, the other in an urn - just about steal the show," wrote Ron Charles for the Post.

Like his parents, Griffin ends up a professor. He does them one better by ultimately landing at a private Connecticut college, where he yearns for his days as a screenwriter in LA. By the time this story begins, his 34-year marriage is on the decline, his daughter has grown up and doesn't need him, and he is in the middle of a midlife meltdown. The year-long span of the story details Griffin's experience with that meltdown.

What Russo does best is make us like the regular guy - Jack Griffin (for me, that affection was won after a time) despite his insecurities and his foibles. He also weaves plots, describes relationships (with the dreaded in-laws and siblings), and creates scenes that ring true with poignancy, humor and grace: The elder Griffins' beach rentals; the horrible wedding catastrophy where half the wedding party ends up at the local hospital.

All told, the Russo magic just wasn't in this one for me.

Nonetheless, I wouldn't be surprised to see the story on the big screen soon: I can picture the novel, with its two weddings and two funerals, failed and redeemed relationships, and the sometimes cliched Cape reminisences, easily translating to film.

Prolific Shillington native John Updike has updated the story of his quarter-century year-old riotous novel "The Witches of Eastwick." As a fan of Updike's work, especially the "Rabbit" books, here's one I will be reading in the near future.

Perhaps you remember the movie verison of "Witches," starring Susan Sarandon, Michelle Pfeiffer, Cher as the witches and Jack Nicholson as the salacious "D."

Can't quite get that cherry-pit launching scene out of my head...

Similarly, this sequel left a bad taste in the mouth of AP reviewer Henry Jackson.

However, this is Updike, and Updike does brooding and melancholy well. I look forward to glimpsing the "moments of brilliance" Jackson speaks of.

The aura has vanished from Updike's witches

By HENRY C. JACKSON

Associated Press Writer
"The Widows of Eastwick" (Alfred A Knopf. 308 pages. $24.95), by John Updike: Even the most wicked witches age. And, as it turns out, a sorceress' decline is by turns as painful, lonely and even common as that of any unmagical being.
The aura has vanished from the three witches of Eastwick that John Updike crafted in a wondrous, taboo-filled novel of the same name 24 years ago. In its sequel, "The Widows of Eastwick," Alexandra, Jane and Sukie are still here but, like the author, they are fading — and sometimes gracelessly.
All three are widows now. Having long ago fled the bedlam they left behind during the ill-fated pursuit of Darryl Van Horne in seaside Eastwick, R.I., the once rollicking coven slowly reconvenes, bonding over their mutual losses but mostly reliving past debauchery.
Since they left Eastwick, contact among the three has faded. Alexandra retreated to the southwest, living remotely with a sculptor husband. Jane moved with her own beau to Connecticut, remaining sharp and cynical. Sukie, once Eastwick's gossip columnist, married a wealthy man and became a second-rate romance novelist.
They take steps to dull their pain, such as they feel it. Alexandra, the most emotive and mournful of the trio, travels to Canada alone, then to Cairo with Jane, who has maintained more of her wicked edge and is less apologetic about the past. When Sukie's husband dies, she joins the ladies in their travels, falling somewhere between on the emotional scale.
If it sounds melancholy, it is. All the reunions feel forced: The witches with each other and then later, inevitably, with Eastwick; Updike with the protagonists and their sexual exploits; the reader with the whole bawdy ensemble.
What's odd is that Updike seems to know this. It seems even to be the point. This is supposed to be sad, regretful. His typically descriptive prose is forlorn throughout.
It's a tone he sets early, as when he describes Alexandra's discovery of her husband's cancer:
"They had joined the legion of elderly couples who fill hospital waiting rooms, as quiet with nervousness as parents and children before a recital. She felt the other couples idly pawing at them with their eyes, trying to guess which of the two was the sick one, the doomed one; she didn't want it to be so obvious."
The plot of "Widows" moves slowly, like an aged thing. Even this feels fairly deliberate. Decline is never as rapid as we'd hope, Updike seems to intone. We have too much time to look back, and that can punish. Even the witches seem to get it:
"How lovely, being remembered," Sukie says to Alexandra at one point. Alexandra's reply says it all: "It can be, or not."
Updike, of course, need not worry about being remembered. He will be recalled fondly — though probably not for this novel. One of the most prolific and gifted writers of his generation, he has nothing left to prove.
There are moments of brilliance, but he, like the witches, is ebbing.
Toward novel's end, Alexandra speaks to the daughter of a former lover, Joe. It's an apt coda — whether intentional or not. (With Updike, one always suspects intent.)
"'How has it been for you,' she asked. 'Being in Eastwick for this summer?'
"'It was ... useful,' Alexandra decided. 'It confirmed my suspicion that I belong elsewhere. There was less here than I remembered.'"