El día de verano en que se celebra la feria organizada por un pequeño asilo de Nueva Jersey es la jornada más importante del año para sus ancianos y enfermos residentes. Se trata de un acontecimiento que anualmente organizan con mucha ilusión para vender a los vecinos de la pequeña población los productos que han hecho ellos mismos. Sin embargo, parece que en esta ocasión las cosas no se van a desarrollar como se habían planificado en un principio. A lo largo del día, los extraordinariamente cercanos personajes de La feria del asilo se desnudan ante nosotros y nos desvelan sus anhelos, sus esperanzas, sus creencias y sus angustias, mostrándonos su desarmante humanidad.

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It was very readable, but I couldn't get interested in the characters. There wasn't much of a plot and it felt like Updike was wanting to make some point or espouse a philosophy, but I didn't get it. ( )

the readers spend a day with the inhabitants of a New England old folks home. Misunderstanding and sadness pervade a display of high level writing. It is a little flat, if you prefer thrillers. ( )

The Poorhouse Fair is John Updike’s debut novel. The story is set on the day of the annual fair at a residential home for the elderly.
Someone once suggested, in relation to terminal illness, that the gulf that opens between the living and those who are dying is unbridgeable. In this book Updike has exposed a similar chasm between youth and old age. Updike’s attention to detail and the solidity with which he builds characters creates a haunting world, and a passionate glimpse into what it means to get old.
The book was written in 1957, but is set twenty years hence in a future America imagined by the author. Age has not diminished the political orneriness of his characters, and one by the name of Hook asks the rhetorical question, ‘Isn’t it significant, now, that of the three presidents assassinated, all were Re-publican?’ Six years after the author penned this remark, a fourth American president was assassinated. And John F. Kennedy was a democrat to boot. In a foreword written in 1964, Updike almost apologises when he says he decided to let the question stand ‘as a vivid anachronism.’ The fact that he mentions it signals his concern with accuracy in the portrayal of characters whose roots are ensnared in a specific historical context. In this respect I felt the book to be a thoughtful critique of an America that resonated with some of my own memories - memories of a country I left in 1983. Updike said he intended to create a ‘caricature of contemporary decadence.’ But it is certainly an American decadence.
There are interesting passages where seemingly random bits of dialogue are spliced into the story but the reader is rewarded with a sense of real-time. The veracity of the setting and the interactions that are taking place between residents, nurses, and visiting relatives is enhanced by a kind of narrative cacophony. Once I ‘got’ what was going on it was a wonderful departure from the normally expected linear quality of narrative, giving the sections towards the end of the book a poetic quality that suited the culmination of the day’s events. I have read several books by Updike and find that he often shifts gear and challenges the reader to abandon prejudices, lay expectations aside and just go along for the ride.
John Updike died in January, 2009. He was 76. Ian McEwan remembered him as ‘one of the greatest chroniclers of the post-war era’ and a writer with a ‘ruthless, recording eye’ (Guardian, 31/01/09). ( )