Roger Lambert, profesor universitario de Teología, recibe un día en su despacho a Dale Kohler, un joven informático que asegura tener una noticia extraordinaria. Está buscando evidencias científicas de que Dios existe y se está manifestando. El paradójico debate sobre la existencia de Dios que mantiene con Dale Kohler no es más que el principio de una serie de cambios en la vida de Roger, que verá cómo las relaciones que mantiene con su mujer Esther y con la hija de su medio hermana, Verna Ekelof, harán temblar los cimientos de su existencia.

Three stars? But it's by John Updike! And the confrontation at the center of the plot seems calculated to fascinate me. So what was the matter? Nothing really, it just wasn't as compelling as his (many) best. I wish I had loved this book, I wanted to. ( )

In Roger’s Version, his eleventh novel, published in 1986, John Updike tells the sorry, sexually charged tale of faith-challenged Roger Lambert, 52: disgraced Methodist minister, now a theology professor at a university in an unnamed city on the northeast coast of the US. One day a young man shows up in his office with an unusual request. Dale Kohler, a computer science student, is, paradoxically, engaged in faith-based research. His examination of data gleaned from studies in a number of areas—number theory, geology, astronomy—as well as his own theological readings, has convinced him that the circumstances resulting in life on earth and culminating in the creation of man could never have come about through a natural process and could only have resulted from the deliberate intervention of a supreme being. He senses that he is close to discovering a mathematical proof that god exists and wants Roger to use his influence to help him secure a grant from the divinity school to support him in his efforts. Roger, who regards Dale’s research as presumptuous, futile and hilariously misguided, is initially dismissive. But he eventually allows himself to be persuaded, not because of any change of heart, but because he’s offended by Dale’s exacting and righteous piety and voicing support for the young man’s project presents him with a perfect opportunity to express his cynicism. Dale is acquainted with Verna, the disgraced 19-year-old daughter of Roger’s half-sister Edna. It was Verna who directed Dale to Roger’s office. Edna lives in Cleveland. Verna’s move east was precipitated by her giving birth to a baby (mix-raced), the father of whom is nowhere in sight, and subsequently getting kicked out of home. Roger lives in an elite neighbourhood with his tiny perfect wife Esther, thirteen years his junior (many years previously Roger’s affair with Esther resulted in the loss of his ministry and the collapse of his first marriage), and ten-year-old son Richie. But Roger and Esther’s marriage is strained: the two hardly communicate and are no longer physically intimate. The bulk of the novel is devoted to chronicling the interlocking relationships that spring up among this cast of characters. Dale, introduced into the Lambert household at Esther’s behest, is hired to tutor Richie in mathematics. Roger, deciding to play the dutiful, caring uncle, visits Verna in her threadbare, crumbling, rent-subsidy apartment in the projects. There, he meets the infant Paula, tries to persuade Verna to obtain her high school equivalency, and is subject to Verna’s brazen and titillating flirtatious overtures. Verna, frustrated by her straitened circumstances, immature, irresponsible, and suffering from a severe case of low self-esteem, sees little value in herself except as an object of male sexual desire. She is short-tempered and often cruel to her daughter. When she finds that she’s pregnant again, she turns to Roger to help her through the ordeal. In the meantime, Esther seduces Dale and the two embark on a lurid affair. Large swaths of narrative are given over to Roger’s contemplation of inscrutable theological puzzles and Dale’s obsessive exertions at the university’s mainframe, crunching numbers and seeking a glimpse of god’s face in the printouts that his calculations generate. The prose, as one expects of Updike, is assured, lyrical, endlessly inventive, and crammed with vivid imagery and surprising but appropriate and memorable turns of phrase. This is Updike in virtuoso mode. After much emotional strife and numerous betrayals, the story reaches an ambiguous conclusion, with Dale’s research project at an impasse and Roger and Esther assuming greater responsibility for Paula’s care, but nowhere near a rapprochement. For all the questions it raises about faith and reason and man’s place in the universe, Roger’s Version declines to deliver anything close to a definitive pronouncement. Like Updike’s characters, we are left to our own devices, to grope our way toward truth and meaning as best we can. ( )

On a recent long vacation I took an old book by Margaret Atwood and "Roger's Version" by John Updike. The Updike book was written in 1986 and it was interesting to observe the culture and attitudes of that time. I have read a lot of Updike but it had been years. I forgot how wonderful his prose is and how well he does characters and place. The story is about a former minister and now a divinity teacher at a university in an unnamed city in the Northeast. Roger left the ministry as a result of an affair with a younger woman(Esther) which resulted in a divorce and marriage to Esther. 14 years later they have 12 year old son and the marriage is not doing well. Entire Dale Kohler a struggling grad student who approaches Roger for help in getting university money for a project to prove God's existence with the use of computers. There is too much technical info. in the book which weighs it down, but the stories of the interplay of all the characters(there is also a young niece in the cast ) is interesting. Given the wealth of output by Updike, I think there are much better books to start with if you have not read Updike(read all of the Rabbit books) but for the Updike reader this one is worth the time. Simply one of the great writers of the 20th century. ( )

I'm always on the lookout for books that don't follow a tired formula, and I can honestly say that I've never encountered a novel like this. Where else can you find a novel with deep discussions of Christian theology, theoretical physics, and computer technology, punctuated with scenes of explicit sex?

Roger Lambert is a professor at a distinguished East Coast divinity school (which sounds a lot like Harvard). A former Methodist minister, he was resigned his ministry after an affair that led to the marriage of his second (younger) wife. One day a grad student comes to him seeking his help to solicit a grant for the purpose of proving the existence of God using data from new discoveries in astronomy and physics with the help of state-of-the-art computers.

Roger is contemptuous of the proposal. He's also contemptuous of the young man. In fact, Roger is such an elitist that there hardly seems to be anyone he admires or respects. He's really just a husk of a man who, though a professed adherent of the theology of Karl Barth (who championed the notion of a God who revealed Himself), ironically hardly sees God revealing Himself anywhere--least of all in humanity. He is definitely not someone from whom one would wisely seek spiritual counsel.

Yet Roger and the young man enter into a relationship. The relationship leads Roger to introduce the young man to his family, and that leads the young man to enter into a steamy affair with Roger's bored wife.

At least, Roger imagines them--in great detail!--having such a steamy affair. And since the entire novel is told from Roger's point-of-view (the book is called, "Roger's Version," after all), who really knows how many of the details are true? Having become as spiritually bankrupt as he is, the vacuum in Roger's life has to be filled with something, and it turns out to be the most primal of things--obsessions with sex. Indeed, Roger's emptiness leads to terrible personal transgressions of his own, but I'll not leave any spoilers.

Having myself attended a prestigious East Coast divinity school (not Harvard) around the era when the novel takes place, I recognized the "type" that Roger incarnates. I have no idea, of course, what my professors' personal lives were like, but there was something about the atmosphere of the place that cultivated a certain effetism among many of them. Karl Barth vociferously made the point (as Roger himself stresses) that God is not an object, but is the Subject. But when academia sets to examine in God in earnest, is it not violated that cardinal principle? And the more intensely one makes God the object of analysis, what remains of the underlying power to fuel morals, ethics, and faith?

What I missed in the book was an understanding of what made Roger into the man he was. Starting out as a minister, he must have had some spiritual calling. What led him to lose that and become so cold in middle-age? Was it because of his surrender to the affair that drove him from his parish? Or had the spark died within him beforehand, which led to his affair? Since Roger is the one telling the story, he remains aloof about the details. We are left to surmise, He remains a cipher. ( )