The Afterlife and Other Stories

by John Updike

To Carter Billings, the hero of John Updike’s title story, all of England has the glow of an afterlife: “A miraculous lacquer lay upon everything, beading each roadside twig, each reed of thatch in the cottage roofs, each tiny daisy trembling in the grass.”

All twenty-two of the stories in this collection—John Updike’s eleventh, and his first in seven years—in various ways partake of this glow, as life beyond middle age is explored and found to have its own particular wonders, from omniscient golf caddies to precinct sexual rumors, from the deaths of mothers and brothers-in-law to the births of grandchildren. As death approaches, life takes on, for some of these aging heroes, a translucence, a magical fragility; vivid memory and casual misconception lend the mundane an antic texture, and the backward view, lengthening, acquires a certain grandeur. Travel, whether to England or Ireland, Italy or the isles of Greece, heightens perceptions and tensions.

As is usual in Mr. Updike’s fiction, spouses quarrel, lovers part, children are brave, and houses with their décor have the presence of personalities. His is a world where innocence stubbornly persists, and fresh beginnings almost outnumber losses.

The afterlife --
Wildlife --
Brother grasshopper --
Conjunction --
The journey to the dead --
The man who became a soprano --
Short Easter --
A sandstone farmhouse --
The other side of the street --
Tristan and Iseult --
George and Vivian. 1. Aperto, chiuso ; 2. Bluebeard in Ireland --
Farrell's caddie --
The rumor --
Falling asleep up north --
The brown chest --
His mother inside him --
Baby's first step --
Playing with dynamite --
The black room --
Cruise --
Grandparenting

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, American, Contemporary, Collections, 20th Century, Literature

316 pages, Hardcover

First published October 25, 1994

About the author

John Hoyer Updike was an American writer. Updike's most famous work is his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and Rabbit Remembered). Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest both won Pulitzer Prizes for Updike. Describing his subject as "the American small town, Protestant middle class," Updike is well known for his careful craftsmanship and prolific writing, having published 22 novels and more than a dozen short story collections as well as poetry, literary criticism and children's books. Hundreds of his stories, reviews, and poems have appeared in The New Yorker since the 1950s. His works often explore sex, faith, and death, and their inter-relationships.

He died of lung cancer at age 76.

Reviews

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

These 21 stories are all about the second half of life: after divorces, kids... they are all typically beautiful Updike prose. Widowers, golf players, art dealers - a wide range of characters leap from the pages in these slices of life. It is not IMHO as powerful a collection of stories from Updike as As Far As It Goes, yet moments of beauty:
"There must have been a hole in the egg besides the one he peeped into, a kind of skylight, admitting to this miniature world a celestial illumination." Short Easter p. 92 - in this story, the protagonist relives Easters past as the the end Daylight Savings Time coincides with the holiday making him think about his own shortened time on earth, "Everything still seemed in place, yet something was immensely missing." P. 102
In The Brown Chest, the memories of several generations are bound in a big brown chest that is moved around, eventually into the protagonist's barn. His soon-to-be daughter in law opens it: "Delicately but fearlessly, she lifted the lid, and out swooped, with the same vividness that had astonished and alarmed his nostrils as a child, cedar and camphor and paper and cloth, the smell of family, family without end." P. 233
Another interesting story describes the conflicted existence of a man and his mother: "So within him his
mother was battling his mother and his sensible, hard-headed wife was the exasperated recipient of a double message." P. 237
There is of course infidelity (Cruise, The Man Who Became a Soprano), but I felt that despite his taking the male perspective, it was a balanced view of the delicate balance in any relationship. I think my favorite stories here were The Rumor where a rumor a false rumor spreads about the protagonist's supposed homosexual promiscuity outside his hetero marriage - a rumor which makes him face his own unexpressed sexual ambiguity and The Other Side of the Street where the protagonist visits his childhood neighborhood and enters the house across the street from his old house and relives his memories.
All the stories carry a sad, nostalgic tone of middle age, but they are all written with the humanity of Updike and his sense for detail - especially in human interrelationships.

[Julie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just when you think you've read every good book that's ever been written, you realize that approximately ten million more exist. Look, I'm only one woman.

I didn't discover John Updike until this very year, and, in the five months that I've been reading him, I've come to realize that he belongs in the top tier of American writers.

However, his writing can be disturbing. It's certainly sexually depraved at times, and you might need to sip vodka while reading to get through some of the profanity.

I love this particular collection of short stories of his and this is why: you can appreciate his excellent writing without getting too deep into despair or too insulted by some of his seemingly misogynistic moods.

This collection of short stories explores "The Afterlife." Not your life after THIS life, but your life after your kids leave the nest, or after your first marriage (whichever comes first--he suggests they're often simultaneous.)

It's the most thought-provoking exploration of middle age and old age I've ever found. I read several of the stories multiple times.

This is an excellent choice for a mature book club, or for anyone over 40.

[Michael Canoeist · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you don't like John Updike, his story collection The Afterlife is the book for you. Every doubt you had about him, every trait you didn't care for, that superior attitude you disliked -- all that will be reinforced tenfold and you will feel righteously vindicated in your negative assessment.

If you do like John Updike, this book will make you wonder why. It will force you to reconsider many of the qualities you thought you loved and reconcile the early work and the mid-career achievements, like the first two of the Rabbit tetralogy, with the decline that set in somewhere in the midst of those big novels.

These 20 or so stories were published when Updike was still only 62, yet they showed me an author who was sick and tired of the world, including much of the life he had made in it. They are full of his nasty streak, a few of the pieces coming alive only when he can indulge that competitive creepiness toward his own family members, especially (natch) the poor first wife he could never tire of. A few expressions of selfishness and spite are so severe as to be breathtaking. Protagonist or author? Well, Updike had only one subject that really kept his attention, himself. So you decide.

There are a couple good stories in here, too, including two or three involving his mother, one of the only other characters that really interested him. But overall, this late middle-aged Updike's sourness can infect your mood. Read at your own risk.

That's the end of my review, per se. For Updike aficionados, the specialists, you know who you are -- there are a couple details worthy of mention. They might also serve as examples of some of my assertions above. In "Playing with Dynamite," Updike describes the protagonist's first adultery with all those tiny details and comments that make him both fun and maddening to read. The protagonist is named Fanshawe, unusual when most of Updike's men are Allen, Richard, or the slightly more dignified Ferris, Farrell and Carter that occur in some of these. Fanshawe is the title of Hawthorne's first book, whose copies he later tried to destroy because of how immature a work it seemed to him. Sooo.... this Fanshawe's reminiscences take us back and forth through various domestic episodes but zeroes in on the day one of his children broke a leg ice-skating because, as his then-wife accuses accurately, Fanshawe was more interested in another parent, Erica, with whom he was talking than in watching the kids. His lame disclaimers quickly bring on a fiery outburst from the wife, right out of the Maples stories Too Far to Go. Segue to more domestic minutiae; then on the story's last page, the real subject: the afternoon he did go to bed with Erica. "When had he ceased to fear death -- or so to speak ceased to grasp it? The moment was as clear in his mind as a black-and-white striped gate at a border crossing: the moment when he first slept with Erica Andrews. How inky-black her eyes seemed, amid the snowy whiteness of the sheets! ... fingertips icy with nervousness, he had peeled off her black lace bra ... almost reluctantly, knowing there would be a white flash that would obliterate everything that had existed of his life before. She had smiled encouragingly, timorously. They were in it together. Her teeth were, after all, less than perfect, with protuberant canines.... "

OK, and more about the pupils of her eyes, the "specialized flesh" of her lips, the "tripwires of her hair," and on to the concluding assessment: "He heard his blood striding in his skull, he felt so full of life. Sex or death, you pick your poison. That had been forever ago. She was still younger and spryer than he, but all things were relative. He did not envy those forever-ago people, for whom the world had such a weight of consequence. Like the Titans, they seemed beautiful but sad in their brief heyday, transition figures between chaos and an airier pantheon."

Wonderful, in its way, maddening, and sad; Updike. As for the text, it was probably not that he had stopped fearing death at that moment, but that he had discovered he no longer feared the judgment that death was to bring, with the inhibitions it had previously saddled on him. Even that is too oblique, when it's clear that it was the judgments that life might very shortly bring that he chose to defy. A moment of great freedom and great destruction, and "Fanshawe" had plunged into life, as he thought, for better and for worse.

That's one of the better ones in this collection, which is why it sounded pretty good there.

Did you ever see the episode of "The Simpsons" in which Updike guested? Every time he spoke, as the character of himself, Homer would quickly answer back, "Shut up, Updike!" Think how many people have wanted to say those words! Wonderful, maddening, but, especially in this one, also sad and even a little pitiful.

[Hakan · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Updike çağdaş Amerikan edebiyatının ağır toplarından olarak bilinir. Ama ABD’de yakaladığı başarı çizgisini ülkesinin ötesine pek taşıyamamış. Ya da bana öyle geliyor. Türkçe’ye de 5-6 kitabı (belki daha fazladır, emin değilim) çevrilmiş ve bizde de pek yankı yaratmamış anladığım kadarıyla. Bu kitabı biraz da bir sahafta rastladığım 1994 yılı ilk baskısının çok temiz bir nüshasının güzelliği hatırına almıştım. Tabii bir de Updike’a, kendim bakımından bir şans daha vermek adına. Zira yıllar önce elime aldığım, esas ünlendiği Rabbit serisinin ilk kitabını da sevememiş, bırakmıştım.

Updike’ı yine sevemedim. Oysa bu kitaptaki öykülerin büyük kısmının konusu dikkat çekici nitelikte; orta yaş üstü kişilerin karşı cinsle ilişkileri veya aileleriyle/geçmişleriyle hesaplaşmaları. Arada saman alevi gibi parlayan bölümler var. Ama yazarın dili boğucu. Bencil ve de belli bir sınıfa münhasır kişilerden oluşan karakterlere yansıyan üst perdeden bakış da antipatik. Keyif alamadan bitirebildim bu kitabı. Ve itiraf ediyorum, 22 öyküden 3-4 tanesini de atlayarak okudum...

[BJ Rose · Rating 2 out of 5]

First the positive: John Updike definitely knew how to use words to evoke mental pictures and feelings of all kinds in the reader. The detailed beauty of his words made you see objects and situations in a new light.

Now the puzzling: Updike was in his 60's when this book was published, so I assume that these stories were written at about that time in his life. Yet nearly every story included adulterous, divorced, remarried (and remarried) characters who seemed to enjoy nothing about the middle-aged stage of life except getting rid of the current wife. And what's with the story about the divorced dad who came back to visit his young adult son, discovers the son had been bitten by infected ticks and may well have Lyme's Disease, and his one thought is that "he had got out just in time" - WHAT?! Yet Updike dedicated this book to two "newcomers to this life" - his grandchildren?

And the negative: Out of 22 short stories in this collection, I found only 4 that had anything about 'the particular wonders' of life beyond middle-age. The rest were very depressing tales of very self-centered people.

[Miglė · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the kitchens in our office looks like it was designed by someone who had read a lot about humans, but has never seen an actual human in their life – maybe Mary the Human Scientist. It‘s absolutely cold and square and any attempt to make it more cosy just looks out of place.

But I actually prefer this kitchen to the other – the hyperrealistic kitchen. There, everything looks heymish, but it gives this uncanny feeling, similar to the feeling I sometimes get at the old people‘s houses. I have no idea what it is, maybe it‘s the distances between things, maybe it‘s almost invasive materiality, but it makes everything else in the world seem unreal, and any other kind of life – too intangible to have a meaning.

So that‘s the feeling I got from reading Updike‘s brilliant – but uncanny – stories about sad old men. The prose is wonderful. It really gets you into this hyperrealistic state, and the description of insomnia in one of the stories must be the best I‘ve ever read. Then materiality, the memories, the slowness of everything really comes together and after reading just a couple of these really short stories, it‘s hard to shake off the feeling that I‘m an old man sitting in a house that I own, remembering my childhood home and that one time I made love with my first wife‘s friend.

And yeah, there‘s that. These men understand the fragility of life and of human relationships, but – maybe because there are so many stories, and they‘re so close to each other that the common topics really do stand out – they‘re so obsessed with childhood homes and women they have loved for a very short time that it‘s nauseating. Maybe I‘ll be like this when I get old, but this romantic objectification just gives me the creeps.

I also begin to feel sad about these sad old men – maybe that was the objective of the author?
Is the brief romantic encounter, that you can mythologize precisely because it was brief, the only thing that you have gotten from your life? Didn‘t you make meaningful friendships? How about kids? Many of them have kids, who seem to exist somehow in the background. Maybe you have created something exciting?

Like I said, it seems hyperrealistic and sad. But also somehow beautiful? Despite that, I wouldn‘t want my thoughts to be like this when I approach the end of my life.

I wouldn‘t mind owning a house, though.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

When John Updike recently passed away, he wrote a poem suggesting that the world would forget him.

After his life, I read the Afterlife and found that despite death, the human echo can be as meaningful as the words spoke when the voice was alive. (barf).

Regardless, Updike crafts a short story collection that hits home in almost every piece. Almost all dealing with adultery, some with mommy/son issues, and some with death (none about the actual afterlife), Updike's stories often make one pause, look up from their book, and think.

What really gets you about this book is Updike's prose style. He writes his stories very simplistically, in the sense that there is no high drama or striking twists and turns. Rather, his narratives are brief glimpses in people's lives that jump quickly through years and facts as if they were matters-of-facts. His word play and discriptions of hard-to-discribe things are impecable.

For instance, the dentist: that feeling of a loose and wiggling tooth; Updike discribes it as a painful tickle. Arrowhead accurate if you ask me.

This book of stories was a delight to read from start to finish.

[Jenny Baker · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[z]

- Updike is a master of the "epiphany" in fiction

[John Mchugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Need some cheering up? Looking for a little help to get you through your mid-life crisis? Well, keep looking. Because the people you'll meet here are also searching for solace. These twenty-two short stories are vintage Updike. They are meticulously crafted, sparse but yet evocative, insightful and sobering and occasionally comforting. Updike looks at ordinary lives and, with minimal effort, allows us see they are anything but ordinary to those involved in living them. No big soaring themes here. Just the gritty details of life and what they tell us about ourselves.

[Bill Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

 Reading a short story collection by one author has its problems. The stories weren’t meant to be read back to back, but as they were released. Usually, when people read them at all its because they’re studying the author and it’s required reading or the author has become extremely popular and many of his or her stories have been missed, like Paul Saunders and his collection, Tenth of December.
 This collection of John Updike’s hit a sweet spot for me. Written in the 80s and 90s, the people in them are about my current age (mid to late 50s) and the era is one I know well so the cultural references were easy to grasp, though if they’re not for you, it doesn’t matter.
 I came to Updike late and I love the way he writes. He had this way of putting statements in the middle of regular prose that stand apart as worthy observations. They’re not inserted as dogma, though, and if you’re not careful you can miss them.
 An example from part of a page-long paragraph in the story His Mother Inside Him:

The walk took him daily through the farm where a certain young woman, the baby of her large family, spied him out and created a reason, one day of deep snow, for them to meet. We are all the result of sexual events, and their faded heat still warms us. Allen’s mother had implanted in him with a set of images that entwined, flourishing and fading, among those he had acquired with his own senses.

 At the end of this collection, I realized that The Afterlife as a whole reads very much like a novel, even though the characters, locations and stories are completely different.
 By the way, as many on this site review what they’ve read, I found a list of Updike’s rules for literary criticism on Wikipedia. Not that they should or can be adhered to in a social setting like Goodreads, but here they are anyway:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.
2. Give enough direct quotation—at least one extended passage—of the book’s prose so the review’s reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.
3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy précis.
4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.
5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's œuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it’s his and not yours?
To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser. Do not accept for review a book you are predisposed to dislike, or committed by friendship to like. Do not imagine yourself a caretaker of any tradition, an enforcer of any party standards, a warrior in any ideological battle, a corrections officer of any kind. Never, never... try to put the author “in his place,” making of him a pawn in a contest with other reviewers. Review the book, not the reputation. Submit to whatever spell, weak or strong, is being cast. Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys of reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.

[Jeff Clausen · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories revolve around the concept of aging and how to navigate it. A wide variety of tales that, if rated separately, would range from a few at 2 or 3 stars and many at 4 or 5 stars. One thing that doesn’t vary is his way with words, an absolute mastery. It’s our pleasure to be carried along, sometimes a smooth ride and sometimes being jostled, and hanging on to see where the road takes you. Great stuff here.

[Paula Dembeck · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoy Updike’s writing so much I was ready to tackle this volume of short stories although I have often struggled with this literary genre. I know it is one of the most difficult formats to master, one which presents challenges to both the writer and the reader. Writers are challenged to create a plausible story with characters developed enough to attract a reader’s attention, all in the space of a few pages while readers are challenged to find some way to connect with both in a way that gives them a satisfying reading experience.

There is never a collection of stories where each one is perfect, but only a few in this collection failed to meet the mark for me. Although the title quickly makes the reader think of that period of time following death, Updike has chosen a different period to share the lives of his characters, the time just past middle age. Written as Updike grew older, these stories all feature men in their late middle age or early sixties. Many have been divorced and have married a second time. Most have been unfaithful. None are especially happy as they look back on their past lives and their relationships with various family members; death is not far off. The stories are draped in a kind of sad nostalgia and an acceptance of having passed some important life milestones. They reflect on childhood, children growing up, the arrival of grandchildren, decaying marriages and the end of life itself. Updike has always been known to be an autobiographical writer and many of the stories resonate with aspects of his own personal past.

In the story that begins the collection, Carter Billings has learned that some in his circle of friends have chosen to do interesting and different things in their later years. He and his wife are visiting just such friends who have recently moved to England. Waking one night in a strange place and needing to go to the bathroom, Billings navigates his way in the dark and tumbles down the stairs, hitting the post of the banister squarely in his chest. It is a painful blow. The next day, his chest continues to be painful, making him feel both vulnerable and alert. He wonders if this is the way things will go down at the end of his life, remembering that sometimes the simple ordinary things that happen can be symbolic of something more important.

Memory looms large in many of these stories. In “A Sandstone Farmhouse” the longest story in the collection, readers meet fifty-four year old Joey who is clearing out the farmhouse where his mother lived and recently died. She had collected many possessions over her many years and still had her college year books and the scrapbook she had made when he was a baby. And there were not just the collected souvenirs of her past life, but all the detritus of her later life—bills, old magazines, newspapers and birthday cards. It naturally sends Joey on a nostalgic trip through his past and a deeper understanding of her life than he ever had when she was alive.

In “Wildlife”, a man named Ferris returns to his former home, the place he remembers as special, where the sighing of a deer was once seen as an almost magical experience. Now they are considered pests, raiding gardens, kicking over garbage cans and stripping the landscape of what little vegetation remains. And recently they have become not just a nuisance but carriers of the dreaded Lyme disease. Sharp shooters have been brought in to reduce the herd, but the numbers of patients with the disease continues to mount at the nearby hospital. Ferris has returned to visit his son Jamie while his ex-wife is off with her latest lover. He looks at the place sadly, now overgrown, the furniture sadly worn and the entire place covered in a gentle air of dishevelment. It evokes a melancholy sadness for the way things used to be.

In “The Other Side of the Street” a man returns to his boyhood home to collect his meager inheritance following the death of his mother. He arranges an appointment with a notary public for the transfer of the title for his mother’s car and notices her office is across the street from the house where he grew up. He begins remembering and reminiscing, awash in longing and later meets up with a former childhood playmate named Wilma who never married and still lives there.

In “Brother Grasshopper” Fred looks back on his friendship with Carlyle, the jock at college he wanted so much to be like. They were friends, married sisters and saw each other often, although they led very different lives. Following his friends death, he is invited to a scattering of his ashes and thinks back to the man he had so much admired as a youth, a man larger than life but easily bored. None of the jobs he did lasted long and he eventually got into photography and the edgy world of soft porno films. Meanwhile Fred invested in real estate and slowly accumulated his wealth. Fred sees himself as the patient ant and Carlyle as the more foolish grasshopper and wonders what ever attracted him to Carlyle and why he admired his friend so much in his past.

Memory is also evoked in the piece titled “The Brown Chest”. A man's son and his soon to be wife, reclaim a family heirloom left undisturbed for years in an old New England farmhouse. They want it for their future home. Interested to see what is inside, they open the lid and the air is filled with the sweet smell of cedar, camphor, paper and cloth, smells which takes the older man deep into his past.

In “The Journey to the Dead”, a recently divorced man calls on a friend of his ex-wife, a victim of cancer. When he visits he sips whiskey, she sips weak tea. Over time he notices her declining physical condition, her jaundiced face, swollen ankles and emaciated frame. When she has a stroke and enters hospital, he visits for the last time, ashamed that he finds it difficult and disturbing to see her in such a frail, ugly and desolate state. It forces him to face the prospect of his own death which cannot be far off and so he flees, never to return.

The story titled “Vivian and George” introduces readers to an argumentative couple. George is twenty years older than his new wife and the two are currently on a vacation in Italy. George is growing increasingly tired of Vivian’s criticisms about his driving as they both experience increasingly irritating moments between them. George thought Vivian would be his last wife and see him to his grave, but she is beginning to annoy him so much, he cannot resist teasing and provoking her. His thoughts go back to his former wife who was so much more accommodating. And he is thinking about a future with a newer wife than the one he has now.

In “The Rumour”, readers meet Frank and Sharon Whittier, a couple who own an art gallery. Sharon confronts Frank about the rumor she has heard, that he is having an affair with a gay graphic artist and is leaving her. Frank calmly refutes the rumor as ridiculous and tells her not to take it seriously. But Sharon cannot help thinking it may be true and sees or imagines evidence of his infidelity everywhere. Frank notices her discomfort and takes malicious pleasure in it, all the while acting innocent and aloof. It amuses him to watch Sharon as she looks for signs of his attraction to other men. Although the rumor had no basis in fact, it has started him thinking his past reactions to other men. The gossip dies when the man who started the rumor apologizes. But Frank begins to wonder. How could such a rumor about him be believed by so many unless it held some element of truth? His mind comes alive with that thought.

These are just a few from this very good collection. Of course the writing is excellent, all up to Updike’s usual high standard. If you are looking for a change from a full length novel, these are a pleasure to read.

[Ian Roseen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A captivating collection of Updike's stories from the late 80s and early 90s. As tends to be the case, these mirror what was going on his own life and here explore not the usual themes of infidelity so much as what lies after it—second marriages, the aged bodies and generational differences the news lovers and spouses inherit, reflection on one's original marriage and what precipitated the affair, the future one sees himself staring down. Several of these (including one O. Henry Award winner) involve an old son's caretaking of his even older mother, closing out his childhood home in the country after she at last passes on. Though there are a couple of clunkers that mystified me, this is a beautiful, largely gentle collection, which pleasantly surprised me with its poignant closing story: a return to the familiar Maples characters as they welcome their first grandchild to this life.

[Peterhsu · Rating 1 out of 5]

Only got through about a third of the stories and then I had to stop. I can only take so many snapshots of the general malaise of elitist upper-class New England divorcees/adulterers, and the mundane actions (or inactions) they take to combat it. The author's style seems to consist of shooting for life observations of extreme subtlety through copious amounts of long-winded narrative.

I think I can appreciate well-articulated existential dissonance (if that's what stuff like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius qualifies as), but most of these stories felt like 5000 words dedicated to describing the tremendous pain that results when the window valances are a slightly different shade of white than the regular drapery.

Apologies to those who consider Updike one of the great American authors of the 20th century...I'm sure his novels are better (or maybe I just don't appreciate 'fine' literature).

[Vivienne Strauss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another great collection from Updike. There were two stories I just couldn't get into so I skipped them. Several stories dealing with an elderly or recently deceased mother were especially touching, I couldn't help but wonder if these were actually Updike and his own mother. Several phrases from the book that really stuck with me-

'He had come to see that the heart, likea rubber ball, loses bounce, and eventually goes dead.'

'Time takes all.'

'Nobody belongs to us, except in memory.'

[Annabelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am partial to short stories, and two of my favorites, the finest in the genre, are Somerset Maugham and John Cheever. This is my second book of short stories by John Updike, a writer I had avoided for some time*, had it not been for a recent comment that his writing was similar to that of Maugham's; for the record, his two short story collections I've read so far read nothing like Maugham. But this one, heralded by The New York Times as "elegies for lost youth and receding passions," reminded me of the stories of John Cheever, but on a more vulnerable scale. In most of the twenty-one stories in the collection, Updike writes with palpable sensitivity and honesty, his stories did not feel like stories, more like random snippets from memoirs still in progress. So moving were some of the stories, I was surprised to find myself shedding tears while reading A Sandstone Farmhouse while onboard a flight from Manila to Dumaguete; no doubt my melancholy playlist (Tchaikovsky's theme from Romeo and Juliet, theme from Cinema Paradiso, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, Chopin's Etude in E Major, Opus 10, aka Tristesse--grief, sadness) contributed to this.

Updike's narrators are all men of a certain age, late fifties to mid-sixties, who came of age during the depression and by the early days of the optimistic, post-war years, were young men on the make, America their oyster. The years have since mellowed them--gone are the aggression, the once consuming virility, and most sketches bear the patina of resignation, thus the "afterlife." Tinged with nostalgia but never sentiment, the narratives, recounted in a detached, eloquent voice, revolve around childhood homes and neighborhoods, ageing parents (especially once feisty, determined mothers), the dynamics of marriage--first, second, or third, infidelity, relationships, fleeting and "forever ago."

Updike excels at this retrospective writing, as he leaves us with a parting shot I'm too young to come to terms with: nobody belongs to us, except in memory.

Three and a half stars.

* I first read John Updike's work, The Witches of Eastwick, in the early to mid-nineties. But back then I paid little heed to writers and their personages, and focused on the genre: anything that resembled Stephen King's work was worth a go. And Eastwick was as fun a romp as the movie, and had you asked me my impressions of its writer, I would have classified him as a comedy/fantasy/horror writer.

My first conscious exposure to Updike, whose photo on the back cover bears a strong resemblance to Guy Talese, was probably between 2005-2010, while hanging out at the music library of Silliman University's pre-war Guy Hall, which then housed the School of Music and Fine Arts. It was here, while waiting for Suyen's weekly piano lessons with Berneval Montes--lessons I would eventually take myself--where I had some, if not most of the late Dr Albert Faurot's book and audio collection at my perusal. Scattered amongst his books on Music, Art and Architecture were some hardbound novels by Updike: Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit at Rest; intriguing titles begging to be browsed. But the little I read turned me off. The protagonist, his wife, and their coterie of friends struck me as cocky, shallow suburban swingers. And if that just sounded like your typical characters from a John Cheever story, know that I was about a decade away from discovering Cheever, and today he remains one of my favorite writers. In any case, because of my run-ins with the Rabbit books, I avoided purchasing any Updike book, until recently.

[Mark Wenz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a love-hate relationship with John Updike’s fiction. On the love side, I marvel at his language, his flowing sentences, his beautiful descriptions, his keen eye for detail, and his artistry as a stylist. On the hate side, I can’t forgive him for his sexism, his white male arrogance, and his subtle racism (he has a male character tell another male character in “The Afterlife” this cringeworthy statement: “Damn white of you”). I hate that his primary characters are typically wealthy, arrogant, professional white males and their angry, simpering, and insecure wives and lovers. I hate that almost all of his characters are divorced and remarried yet still engage frequently in casual extramarital affairs without guilt. Updike’s attitudes throughout his career seemed anchored in an aristocratic Ivy League snobbiness that he never transcends, even in his later books, like this one. In “Cruise,” the male protagonist tells the lover he met onboard, when he’s sick and she wants to go to the bar and mingle, “Go, go, you bitch.” In George and Vivian, the latter character is constantly complaining shrewishly and “emasculating” her husband, who retaliates with passive-aggressive glee. The narrator of “Grandparenting,” in typical Updikeian flair, describes his son-in-law as having “woman’s-length hair.” Stereotypes, stereotypes, everywhere! Almost all of the characters are white, but when an African American character is present, he makes a point of letting us all know how black that person is. I expect more of a man with Updike’s mastery of language, but his attitudes and insights don’t have the same brilliance and sensitivity. Let me stop highlighting Updike’s shortcomings for a moment as we celebrate his artistry. Some of the stories in this collection are absolutely marvelous. I’ll point to three: “A Sandstone Farmhouse,” which is a brilliant evocation of a house, the history behind it, and the people who populated it; “Playing With Dynamite,” which I first encountered in the first volume of The Best American Short Stories that I ever purchased in 1995, a story that brilliantly captures the experiences of aging that its protagonist endures; and “The Rumor,” in which a man begins to awaken to the latent homosexuality within him (surprisingly Updike doesn’t come across as homophobic despite the latent misogyny and racism that permeate his work). The bottom line: I’m both attracted to and repelled by Updike’s fiction. I have read seven of his books in the last year, including his lauded Rabbit series and his “groundbreaking” Couples (which is flawed in all the ways I have mentioned above), but I’ve had enough Updike for a while. It’s time to explore some new points of view in 2022. Grade: B

[Tim O'Leary · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the beginning, a primary motivation for devoting so much attention to Goodreads, was to avoid the likelihood of re-reading books by mistake. Life is short and--at my age--what few years steadfastly remain are valued accordingly. Not to discount Updike's writing in any way, his plotlines which began as freshly trod ground gave way to vaguely familiar paths. More particularly, those that, by exception, I hadn't liked. Not so much on the first round. And not so much more on the second. A curious thing: how cognisance is wired into the brain's bias, those perceptions (memories), being negatively predisposed perhaps, accessible to recall before certain others. To concentrate the focus of this review on but a few of his twenty-one stories that stood out as "memorably" worse would be unfair. His "Collected Earlier Stories," and then another Library of America volume, his "Later Stories," were both read previously as recently as last year; the latter including those that resurfaced from "The Afterlife." The title, coincidence that it is, fits. "Problems" (1979),"Trust Me" (1987), "The Afterlife" (1994), "Licks of Love" (2000), "My Father's Tears" (2009) featured together in "Later Stories" were all written when Updike was in his mid-forties to mid-seventies; a majority appearing originally in The New Yorker. Note to self: next time in the used bookstore, check your Goodreads. Or, read the stories again, should memory in question be possibly failing. As was recently related to a college roommate on his birthday: "May we be friends until we're old and senile. And then we'll be new friends."

[Rick Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Updike was always one of the greatest of American voices, a statement that sounds ingratiating and cloying even though it's obviously true, given the outstanding richness and breadth of his writing over the last half of the twentieth century. However, in this collection, he seems to come back again and again to the maritally dissolute senior citizen encountering awkward reminders of mortality and the incredible difficulty of communicating clearly. It is a bit depressing to think that he could have been mining his own experiences for such grey material, and it would be selling him short to come to that conclusion, given how magical his imagination has always been. (Think, for example, of how he put The Poorhouse Fair together when he was only in his twenties. Incredible.) Even so, I couldn't help but feel that I was spying on his own journals and diaries to some extent and came away a little bit flattened by his residual cynicism. Not on everything, of course--in fact, one story is a beautiful dip into nostalgic waters as the character returns to where he grew up and learns that a treasured part of his past is still there--but Updike seems to be taking a certain grim delight in pointing out the foibles of human experience, even in the twilight of our lives. That, of course, was always his game.

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my first Updike book, but will certainly not be my last. Finally I have found an author whose prose is as beautiful and streaming as Fitzgerald's. The subject matter, while still profound and deep, is more depressing. Nearly all of the stories in this compilation describe the waning years of people's lives as they reflect on the things they gave up long ago. Admittedly, some of the protagonists in these stories renew their lives in older age, mostly through unattached sex, but the sense is always that they are making up for missed adventures as younger folks. Also, I believe all of the protagonists were male, leaving one-half of the population unaccounted for in these feelings. I loved the writing and liked the plaintive subject matter.

[Cameron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I dread the day -and I know this day is coming soon - there are no more collections of Updike short stories for me to read. His shorts are my favorite leisure read and palate cleanser. Few writers manage to so effortlessly cram the highbrow and lowbrow together. It seems like Updike is remembered more for the lowbrow, unfortunately. Perhaps you need to be a man to fully appreciate or excuse his thematic obsessions, I don't know. But I will never get tired of these stories.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

These later stories by Updike are graceful meditations on having reached a certain point in life, where looking back takes precedence over squinting into an unknowable future. Two or three of them didn't work for me, but I found the majority of them to be enjoyable and touching. "Grandparenting," which I assume is the final Maples story, is a treat. This collection reminded me that I often like Udike's short stories better than most of his novels.

[Dr. Jon Pirtle · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this collection of short stories, Updike intimates of themes about dissolution, decay, divorce, deception, and death. They almost all involve questions and veiled statements about endings and about how some few individuals try to salvage beauty and truths from the rubble, but seem nevertheless unsure whether the efforts are even worth it.

[Joe Pags · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not all great stories, but most have at least one, if not more, of those John Updike zingers. That comment on life, as if the cosmic joke is on all of us. Or the razor sharp wit, made through rigorous observation of human behavior and social coping, peeling back with little regard for posterity, our bad habits, inferior thinking, and deepest musings about one another.

[James Biser · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an entertaining group of stories by a master story teller. With excellent dialogue and good views of what is happening in the minds of the characters, these stories are great stories of people who come to feel like acquaintances that the readers come to know well. Updike writes well.

[Beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are very good stories. Updike writes so well about old houses and how people deal with their memories. I also liked the multiple portraits of mothers. The marriage stories seemed more dated and not as relevant anymore.

[Sohrab · Rating 5 out of 5]

Updike is the goat

[Matthew · Rating 2 out of 5]

Unimpressed with his short works

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

TikTok review here: https://www.tiktok.com/@kellyhitchcoc...