Mr. Updike visits Brazil.

I read authors serially but not chronologically. I went from John Updike's Couples (1968 - and as perfect an evocation of the 1960s as a Byrds eight-track cartridge at full volume in a yellow 1960s Volkswagen Type 3 fastback on the Great Ocean Road at sunset); to Rabbit, Run (1965), to Marry Me (1976), to Bech: a Book (1970). Then I found a small, orange paperback in a second-hand bookshop in Pakenham: Of the Farm (1965). A minor story, a sad tone poem, and as good a piece of writing as you’ll find in the English language, in which the slow methodical tractor-mowing of a field becomes the metaphor for a tentative second marriage thrown into relief by the entry of a mother-in-law. Or vice versa. The most level-headed character in the story is the eleven-year-old stepson caught in the middle of the fracture. I finished Of the Farm and jumped thirty years into Updike's future with Brazil (1994).

It’s a satire. Or is it? The characters never grow. I waited for the hook to drag me in, as it did in what I expected would be the somewhat dated Bech: a Book, which turned out to be as vital as the day it was variously written (it’s a collection). But no. The action in Brazil, far too much of it, falls on the pages like an avalanche of rubbish after a five-day rock festival. A near-naked slumdweller sees a beautiful rich near-naked girl on the beach, presents her with a stolen ring which he conveniently has in a pocket (a pocket in what?), and they abscond. Her family sets gangsters on their trail; while his family betrays them by inviting the pair home, where the crooks are waiting in the loungeroom, guns drawn, in a parody of James Hadley Chase. The dialogue (the characters are overwhelmingly native) is cliched mock-biblical verging on pidgin-pirate: "How came thee here?" (Peixoto) asked her. "Art thou yet another who conspires in my foul brother's treachery?"

Stilted was never early Updike, who cites Tristan and Isolde as inspiration for his lead characters Tristao and Isabel, but that may have been a red herring. Updike puppeteers the pair to prove, in the ultimate satirical plotline, that black is white; possibly, cleverly or ironically, predictive of the First World's cultural appropriation obsessions of a quarter century later. But it's heavy-handed, and the wand of the master conjuror's language tricks of his earlier writing has turned back into, as if at some fictional midnight, a pencil. If disappointing, it has to be remembered that while inferior to Updike's earlier works, this will beat pointless 99 out of a hundred so-called 'bestsellers'.

Brazil, John Updike, Penguin, 1994.

Rating: For die-hard Updike fans only. Otherwise re-read Couples.