โ Scribed by John Updike
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Starred Review. Updike compresses the strata of a life in his delicately rendered, tremendously moving posthumous collection. In Free, the memory of a life-affirming affair buckles against a man's loyalty to his deceased wife: he recognizes that becoming a well-bred stick offers more consolation in old age than the sluggish arousal of his sensuality. In The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe, the retired protagonist, depressed by what he perceives as the universe's indifference to human affairs, is done in by the accumulated detritus of his life. Many characters are haunted by a sense of isolation, such as the protagonist of Personal Archaeology, who roams his Massachusetts estate, searching for traces of previous ownership while sifting through his own petty contribution, or the emotionally stranded absentee landlord of an Alton, Pa., family farm in The Road Home, who returns after 50 years and finds himself lost in his hometown. From Kinderszenen, which depicts the anxious time of smalltown late 1930s, to Varieties of Religious Experience, in which a grandfather watches the twin towers fall, time ushers in brutal changes. With masterly assurance, Updike transforms the familiar into the mysterious. (June)
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Starred Review. In the title story of this miraculous final collection, the aging narrator admits, "I have never really left Pennsylvania, that is where the self I value is stored, no matter how infrequently I check on its condition." Most of these stories evoke Updike's Olinger and environs at least in passing, nicely complementing the 2003 retrospective collection The Early Stories, 19531975, with its tantalizing hints of autobiography. In "Personal Archaeology," a restless retiree uncovers several distinct strata of rusty junk on his small piece of suburban land and realizes that his own lost golf balls will form yet another such layer. In "The Full Glass," an elderly man takes pride in his efficient bedroom routines, such as filling a glass with water before opening the pill bottles. In "Free," a recent widower starts to miss the wife from whom he had longed to escape. A few of the stories take place at high school reunions, where conversations resume midstream after 50 years. Like his ancient characters, Updike rambles on at times, but no one will complain. Recommended for all collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/09.]Edward B. St John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
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๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
### From Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Updike compresses the strata of a life in his delicately rendered, tremendously moving posthumous collection. In Free, the memory of a life-affirming affair buckles against a man's loyalty to his deceased wife: he recognizes that becoming a well-bred stick
*"Drinking a toast to the visible world, his impending disappearance from it be damned."* That's how John Updike describes one of his elderly protagonists in this, his final collection of short stories. He might have been writing about himself. In *My Father's Tears,* the author revisits his signatu
Im not myself. Im messier. Dangerous. Im numb and chaotic with a dash of self-destructive. I know the truth about my brothers death, but it doesnt bring me comfort. Who wants to believe the girl with a dud gun in her purse and prescription pills in her palm? Young and I are crash
My Mother's Lover and Other Stories is a collection of fourteen stories about people who suffer from curious ailments: of a poet whose writing is seen to be an ailment by her family; an insomniac's experience with sleep therapy; a woman's obsession with getting rid of plastic; a woman in Darjeeling
My Mother's Lover and Other Stories is a collection of fourteen stories about people who suffer from curious ailments: of a poet whose writing is seen to be an ailment by her family; an insomniac's experience with sleep therapy; a woman's obsession with getting rid of plastic; a woman in Darjeeling
On a holy mountain in the depths of Persia there is a cave with a mysterious cuneiform carving deep inside it. Aga Akbar, a deaf-mute boy from the mountain, develops his own private script from these symbols and writes passionately of his life, his family and his efforts to make sense of the changes