Toward the End of Time

Set in New England, like many of Updike's novels, Toward the End of Time portrays a world in which the Chinese and the Americans have attacked one another with nuclear weapons.

Spin and Phil, young thugs who collect protection money from Ben, clash with Deirdre, who takes a more and more authoritative role in the house.

Ben helps them establish local legitimacy in exchange for commissions on their earnings and sexual favors from their young female companion, Doreen.

During his long hospital stay, Gloria hires FedEx — for whom Phil is now working — to get rid of the residents of the makeshift house.

Creatures called Metallobioforms designed to clear away large tracts of land for human exploitation are used to raze the house.

In a review for the New York Observer entitled, "John Updike, Champion Literary Phallocrat, Drops One; Is This Finally the End for Magnificent Narcissists?"

She praises Updike's "brilliant metaphors" and describes the central character Ben Turnbull in his semi-idyllic, upper class rural home as "a Thoreau run through the meat grinder of the 20th century."