The centaur

By John Updike

Subjects: Fantasy, Teacher-student relationships, Teachers, Fathers and sons, fiction, American fiction (fictional works by one author), Fiction, award:national_book_award=1964, Fathers and sons, award:national_book_award=fiction, Blizzards, Teachers, fiction, National Book Award Winner, Reading Level-Grade 11, High school teachers, Pennsylvania, fiction, Fiction in English, Literature, Chiron (Greek mythology), Reading Level-Grade 12, Centaurs

Description: In a small Pennsylvania town in the late 1940s, schoolteacher George Caldwell yearns to find some meaning in his life. Alone with his teenage son for three days in a blizzard, Caldwell sees his son grow and change as he himself begins to lost touch with his life. Interwoven with the myth of Chiron, the noblest centaur, and his own relationship to Prometheus, The Centaur is one of John Updike's most brilliant and unusual novels.