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Trust Me
The theme of trust, betrayed or fulfilled, runs through this collection of short stories: Parents lead children into peril, husbands abandon wives, wives manipulate husbands, and time undermines all. Love pangs, a favorite subject of the author, take on a new urgency as earthquakes, illnesses, lost wallets, and deaths of distant friends besiege his aging heroes and heroines. One man loves his wife’s twin, and several men love the imagined bliss of their pasts; one woman takes an impotent lover, and another must administer her father’s death. Bourgeois comforts and youthful convictions are tenderly seen as certain to erode: “Man,” as one of these stories concludes, “was not meant to abide in paradise.”
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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573 people want to read
About the author
John Updike
862 books2,435 followersJohn 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.
He died of lung cancer at age 76.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
December 26, 2023
I know. Here I am again, with Mr. U, all breathless and ecstatic. I'm such a broken record (for the most part) where he's concerned, so I won't bore you for long (I know it's boring, even my dear mother sort of rolls her eyes at my bookcase and his prominent and impressive real estate there).
All I can say is that this writer is of another order. His sentences, they're symphonic to me. His honesty and the way he hones in on the truth (some might say flaws) of a person, of a relationship, draws me back to his work, time and again.
He just speaks to me. There you have it. What else can you ask of a writer?
He can do whatever he damn well wants. Novels, short stories, essays, poetry, criticism, children's lit.
And I love him, unapologetically.
All I can say is that this writer is of another order. His sentences, they're symphonic to me. His honesty and the way he hones in on the truth (some might say flaws) of a person, of a relationship, draws me back to his work, time and again.
He just speaks to me. There you have it. What else can you ask of a writer?
He can do whatever he damn well wants. Novels, short stories, essays, poetry, criticism, children's lit.
And I love him, unapologetically.
September 25, 2023
JOHN UPDIKE, Fidati di me, Rizzoli, 1991, traduzione di Andrea Terzi
Uomini e donne di mezza età, di solito benestanti, con più matrimoni alle spalle oppure con separazioni in corso o con una vita apparentemente felice, dove la scoperta del tradimento di lei diventa per lui l’occasione per andarsene oppure dove la malattia di lui allontana subito lei. Sono questi i protagonisti dei ventidue racconti, pubblicati su varie riviste e raccolti in volume nel 1987. Coppie scoppiate o che stanno per scoppiare, con legami tenuti insieme a fatica mentre ci si destreggia in complicate relazioni extraconiugali. Complicati sono anche i rapporti con il proprio passato e con i figli.
Durante il periodo del divorzio, ad Harold parve di lasciare appesi i propri figli da un tetto all’altro, con la muta preghiera, ogni volta, di fidarsi di lui. Come quando, anni prima, aveva sistemato la macchinetta dei denti in bocca a sua figlia, usando una pinza sottile. La bimba era corsa da lui, dolorante per il filo metallico che premeva contro l’interno della guancia. Poi, mentre egli le introduceva in bocca le dita maldestre, gli occhi infantili s’erano dilatati per la paura di sentire ancora più male. Lui le aveva detto gaiamente: “Tu non ti fidi di me.” Con un’allegria che rivelava uno spazio cruciale, un vuoto tra le rispettive situazioni: un insuccesso per lui, sofferenza per lei. La sofferenza altrui non è sofferenza nostra. La religione, forse, tenta di colmare quello spazio, ma i torturatori di ogni generazione lo tengono aperto. Senza di esso, la compassione ci annienterebbe; lo spazio dell’indifferenza è là dove noi possiamo respirare.
Descrivendo le inquietudini dei suoi “eroi”, con ironia partecipe Updike mette in scena la crisi del loro fragile mondo e dei rapporti che lo sorreggono a fatica.
Non tutti allo stesso livello, i racconti migliori sono “Fidati di me”, “Morte procurata”, “Tuttora di una qualche utilità”, “L’altra” e “La stagione delle foglie”. Menzione speciale per il breve “Pigmalione”, in cui un’ironia più leggera nasconde bene l’aspetto tragico della situazione. Inizia così.
Ciò che gli piaceva della sua prima moglie era il dono di natura di imitazione e di efficacia di mimo: dopo un party, a casa di loro o altri, lei gli riproduceva vividamente quel che avevano visto: le facce, le voci, costringendo la bocca aggraziata a piccole contorsioni che materializzavano, per un attimo sorprendente, la presenza di qualcuno ora assente, ma incontrato poco prima.
“Be’, se vevamente – com’è che parla Gwen? – se io vevamente mi pveoccupassi della tutela …” E lui, il marito, scoppiava a ridere e continuava in quella ilarità, anche se Gwen era in segreto la sua amante e fosse in predicato per divenire sua moglie, la sua seconda moglie.
Uomini e donne di mezza età, di solito benestanti, con più matrimoni alle spalle oppure con separazioni in corso o con una vita apparentemente felice, dove la scoperta del tradimento di lei diventa per lui l’occasione per andarsene oppure dove la malattia di lui allontana subito lei. Sono questi i protagonisti dei ventidue racconti, pubblicati su varie riviste e raccolti in volume nel 1987. Coppie scoppiate o che stanno per scoppiare, con legami tenuti insieme a fatica mentre ci si destreggia in complicate relazioni extraconiugali. Complicati sono anche i rapporti con il proprio passato e con i figli.
Durante il periodo del divorzio, ad Harold parve di lasciare appesi i propri figli da un tetto all’altro, con la muta preghiera, ogni volta, di fidarsi di lui. Come quando, anni prima, aveva sistemato la macchinetta dei denti in bocca a sua figlia, usando una pinza sottile. La bimba era corsa da lui, dolorante per il filo metallico che premeva contro l’interno della guancia. Poi, mentre egli le introduceva in bocca le dita maldestre, gli occhi infantili s’erano dilatati per la paura di sentire ancora più male. Lui le aveva detto gaiamente: “Tu non ti fidi di me.” Con un’allegria che rivelava uno spazio cruciale, un vuoto tra le rispettive situazioni: un insuccesso per lui, sofferenza per lei. La sofferenza altrui non è sofferenza nostra. La religione, forse, tenta di colmare quello spazio, ma i torturatori di ogni generazione lo tengono aperto. Senza di esso, la compassione ci annienterebbe; lo spazio dell’indifferenza è là dove noi possiamo respirare.
Descrivendo le inquietudini dei suoi “eroi”, con ironia partecipe Updike mette in scena la crisi del loro fragile mondo e dei rapporti che lo sorreggono a fatica.
Non tutti allo stesso livello, i racconti migliori sono “Fidati di me”, “Morte procurata”, “Tuttora di una qualche utilità”, “L’altra” e “La stagione delle foglie”. Menzione speciale per il breve “Pigmalione”, in cui un’ironia più leggera nasconde bene l’aspetto tragico della situazione. Inizia così.
Ciò che gli piaceva della sua prima moglie era il dono di natura di imitazione e di efficacia di mimo: dopo un party, a casa di loro o altri, lei gli riproduceva vividamente quel che avevano visto: le facce, le voci, costringendo la bocca aggraziata a piccole contorsioni che materializzavano, per un attimo sorprendente, la presenza di qualcuno ora assente, ma incontrato poco prima.
“Be’, se vevamente – com’è che parla Gwen? – se io vevamente mi pveoccupassi della tutela …” E lui, il marito, scoppiava a ridere e continuava in quella ilarità, anche se Gwen era in segreto la sua amante e fosse in predicato per divenire sua moglie, la sua seconda moglie.
March 11, 2012
Depending on how you count (and the dust jacket specifies at least three different ways of counting), Trust Me is John Updike's eighth collection of short stories. I think Updike is best approached as a short story writer, though he's a capable novelist and an excellent critic (I haven't read his poetry), and this is not a bad place to start. With respect to short fiction, Pigeon Feathers and Other Stories laid the foundation of his reputation; the stories collected in Trust Me are the bricks with which a monument was erected on that foundation--workmanlike, perhaps, but no less impressive for it.
It's easy to get complacent with Updike because he talks about mundane and familiar things--and because, thematically, he repeats himself. (If you've read more than two or three Updike stories, you know what I'm talking about: sex; marital infidelity, actual or meditated; divorce; Pennsylvania boyhood replaced by New England adulthood; churchgoing; fear of death; aimlessness of middle age; and so on). Is Updike's obsessive treatment of his subjects a strength or weakness? We'll probably always disagree about that. I tend to say "strength," because the tediousness is outweighed by the power of insight that Updike can muster when he relentlessly works these themes over and over, dramatizing them again and again, recapitulating the decades of mistake and moments of recognition that make up the interchangeable lives of his characters and himself. (Then again, it could be that even the stories' tediousness is part of their strength: tediousness might be an appropriate mood for Updike's stories to evoke when taken as a group, in light of his subjects.)
I said you can get complacent with Updike, but some of the stories in Trust Me might startle you out of complacency. The concluding story, "The Other Woman," is one such tour de force: the protagonist, beset by ennui, discovers his wife's affair with a mutual married friend, and he is thrilled with the power and the opportunities this knowledge gives him. The title character, the "other woman," is the fourth corner of the love triangle, the wife of the cuckold's wife's lover. We glimpse her, briefly, only through the self-centered eyes of the protagonist, but these glimpses suggest that she (the innocent wife) is the one who suffers most, and that the protagonist (the innocent husband) is the one who causes the most suffering.
This is a striking, nearly perfectly crafted story, and there are others like it ("Still of Some Use"; "More Stately Mansions"; "Getting into the Set"). Transcendence is a little harder to find here than in Updike's earlier work (cf., again, Pigeon Feathers; Trust Me pays less attention to childhood and adolescence and offers nothing that's quite on the level of "A&P" or Pigeon Feathers's title story). I don't know whether this means Trust Me collects more mature work, or if it's simply more ambiguous, or if maybe Updike's great gift for unassuming drama had slipped from his grasp. There are enough moments of brilliance to make this a collection worth reading, and there are enough questions to make this a collection worth returning to.
It's easy to get complacent with Updike because he talks about mundane and familiar things--and because, thematically, he repeats himself. (If you've read more than two or three Updike stories, you know what I'm talking about: sex; marital infidelity, actual or meditated; divorce; Pennsylvania boyhood replaced by New England adulthood; churchgoing; fear of death; aimlessness of middle age; and so on). Is Updike's obsessive treatment of his subjects a strength or weakness? We'll probably always disagree about that. I tend to say "strength," because the tediousness is outweighed by the power of insight that Updike can muster when he relentlessly works these themes over and over, dramatizing them again and again, recapitulating the decades of mistake and moments of recognition that make up the interchangeable lives of his characters and himself. (Then again, it could be that even the stories' tediousness is part of their strength: tediousness might be an appropriate mood for Updike's stories to evoke when taken as a group, in light of his subjects.)
I said you can get complacent with Updike, but some of the stories in Trust Me might startle you out of complacency. The concluding story, "The Other Woman," is one such tour de force: the protagonist, beset by ennui, discovers his wife's affair with a mutual married friend, and he is thrilled with the power and the opportunities this knowledge gives him. The title character, the "other woman," is the fourth corner of the love triangle, the wife of the cuckold's wife's lover. We glimpse her, briefly, only through the self-centered eyes of the protagonist, but these glimpses suggest that she (the innocent wife) is the one who suffers most, and that the protagonist (the innocent husband) is the one who causes the most suffering.
This is a striking, nearly perfectly crafted story, and there are others like it ("Still of Some Use"; "More Stately Mansions"; "Getting into the Set"). Transcendence is a little harder to find here than in Updike's earlier work (cf., again, Pigeon Feathers; Trust Me pays less attention to childhood and adolescence and offers nothing that's quite on the level of "A&P" or Pigeon Feathers's title story). I don't know whether this means Trust Me collects more mature work, or if it's simply more ambiguous, or if maybe Updike's great gift for unassuming drama had slipped from his grasp. There are enough moments of brilliance to make this a collection worth reading, and there are enough questions to make this a collection worth returning to.
June 7, 2014
Nesta coletânea de contos de John Updike, a questão da confiança, quase sempre traída, está subjacente a todas as histórias. Um livro de leitura rápida, muito bem escrito.
“Harold não tinha tido uma namorada durante muitos anos e foi obrigado a reaprender a delicada mistura de condescendência e de provocação que é o namoro”.
“Quando comecei a ir para a cama com Karen (…) tive dificuldade em aceitar o fervor excitado que ela punha em atos que com Mónica possuíam um certo peso solene, como de qualquer coisa concedida. Mónica confessou-me uma vez que se retraía no ato sexual, com medo de perder a sua identidade; Karen parecia procurar a sua com impaciência”.
“ O beijo de Pat, tão inesperadamente apaixonado, sentia-o agora como um estorvo visível na sua boca. Que quisera ela dizer com isso? Que tinha esquecido quem ele era e como a havia traído? Ou que o via agora simplesmente como um bocado do passado e se agarrara a ele um momento como todos nós nos desejamos agarrar ao que já passou?”
“Harold não tinha tido uma namorada durante muitos anos e foi obrigado a reaprender a delicada mistura de condescendência e de provocação que é o namoro”.
“Quando comecei a ir para a cama com Karen (…) tive dificuldade em aceitar o fervor excitado que ela punha em atos que com Mónica possuíam um certo peso solene, como de qualquer coisa concedida. Mónica confessou-me uma vez que se retraía no ato sexual, com medo de perder a sua identidade; Karen parecia procurar a sua com impaciência”.
“ O beijo de Pat, tão inesperadamente apaixonado, sentia-o agora como um estorvo visível na sua boca. Que quisera ela dizer com isso? Que tinha esquecido quem ele era e como a havia traído? Ou que o via agora simplesmente como um bocado do passado e se agarrara a ele um momento como todos nós nos desejamos agarrar ao que já passou?”
September 30, 2011
Yes, I feel strange giving John Updike a two-star rating. No, I did not want to keep reading about "great, slanting splashes" of New England infidelity strung together with "rhomboids broken by feathery silhouettes of houseplants."
Maybe I did let "the master's" penchant for flowery language get to me just this once.:)
There's no doubt that Updike ranks among the 20th Century greats, (Right? I remember my English prof mentioning him in the same sentence as Nathaniel Hawthorne) it's just that I've read and hence, come to expect, much greater things from him. Most negative reviews have touched upon his tendency to tread familiar ground and that is definitely the basis for mine. It's not that "More Stately Mansions" is a poorly-written story for example, but did it's characters grow as the ending suggests? And it's not as if "Leaf Season" is boring to read - the pace is quick, the character shifts subtle - but how are we supposed to care about these families in the least if we don't know their backgrounds? Then there were "Pygmalion" and "The Ideal Village" which were only a couple pages - we didn't really get to know anyone! It seemed to me that Updike chose to go only go so deep in this collection, and maybe that is enough to satisfy his wide-ranging audience.
For me though, I am drawn to idiosyncratic characters, not middle-class couples thinking about sleeping with their neighbor. Maybe that's why my favorites in this collection were "Learn a Trade" about a failed hobby-artist's attempt to influence his son's budding talent or "The Wallet" about an older man's reluctance to face the aging process. And then there's the haunting "Poker night," a real treasure told in more simple language about a man faced with telling his wife and friends that he's been diagnosed with cancer. Here, he realizes:
It's in my character to feel worse about folding a winner than betting a loser; it seems less of a sin against God or Nature or whatever.
I love that insight, how it uses the poker game to reflect his inner struggle to not go down without a fight. Brilliant stuff.
Again, there are many moments of great writing, in particular, great imagery, in this collection (Fulham awoke with a soreness in his stomach, a chafing hairball of vague anxiety...). I often found myself bowing to his ability to construe sentences so deftly; one is never bored bouncing along to Updike's rhythms. But in the end, I wanted more than paranoid New England suburbia. Maybe I'll just always enjoy his novels more, where even if "couples" are the subject, they are given more room to maneuver into trouble and more time to redeem themselves.
Maybe I did let "the master's" penchant for flowery language get to me just this once.:)
There's no doubt that Updike ranks among the 20th Century greats, (Right? I remember my English prof mentioning him in the same sentence as Nathaniel Hawthorne) it's just that I've read and hence, come to expect, much greater things from him. Most negative reviews have touched upon his tendency to tread familiar ground and that is definitely the basis for mine. It's not that "More Stately Mansions" is a poorly-written story for example, but did it's characters grow as the ending suggests? And it's not as if "Leaf Season" is boring to read - the pace is quick, the character shifts subtle - but how are we supposed to care about these families in the least if we don't know their backgrounds? Then there were "Pygmalion" and "The Ideal Village" which were only a couple pages - we didn't really get to know anyone! It seemed to me that Updike chose to go only go so deep in this collection, and maybe that is enough to satisfy his wide-ranging audience.
For me though, I am drawn to idiosyncratic characters, not middle-class couples thinking about sleeping with their neighbor. Maybe that's why my favorites in this collection were "Learn a Trade" about a failed hobby-artist's attempt to influence his son's budding talent or "The Wallet" about an older man's reluctance to face the aging process. And then there's the haunting "Poker night," a real treasure told in more simple language about a man faced with telling his wife and friends that he's been diagnosed with cancer. Here, he realizes:
It's in my character to feel worse about folding a winner than betting a loser; it seems less of a sin against God or Nature or whatever.
I love that insight, how it uses the poker game to reflect his inner struggle to not go down without a fight. Brilliant stuff.
Again, there are many moments of great writing, in particular, great imagery, in this collection (Fulham awoke with a soreness in his stomach, a chafing hairball of vague anxiety...). I often found myself bowing to his ability to construe sentences so deftly; one is never bored bouncing along to Updike's rhythms. But in the end, I wanted more than paranoid New England suburbia. Maybe I'll just always enjoy his novels more, where even if "couples" are the subject, they are given more room to maneuver into trouble and more time to redeem themselves.
November 5, 2015
I struggled to finish this. Maybe you have to be a middle aged divorcee to understand and appreciate this book, but I didn't get it. The whole thing just seemed like it was pounding "never get married, because someone will cheat and be awful and you will be miserable" into my head with every page. And then questioning why their daughters, already to the ancient age of mid-twenties, aren't getting married while reviewing all of their parents awful separations. I can't tell if that was supposed to be satire? Nothing else in the book was humorous at all, so I genuinely can't tell if he was trying to be funny there. Maybe I'll read this again in my fifties and really enjoy it. But this was a very poor start to John Updike, who I've heard people rave about.
December 29, 2023
Goede verhalen. Over tig manieren om als getrouwd stel uit elkaar te vallen. En dat de liefde achteraf dan weer heel dun bleek te zijn. Een pakketje schroot met een dun laagje chroom. En boeken met verhalen vind ik zelf altijd wat minder. Op het moment dat het verhaal je pakt is het ook alweer afgelopen. Een roman leest lekkerder weg.
January 7, 2021
Irregular colección de relatos sobre la vida cotidiana de familias y parejas gringas de clase media entre los años 1960s y 1980s. Aunque la traducción no es tan mala, me incomodan algunas expresiones demasiado coloquiales españolas y los limitados tiempos verbales, especialmente la ausencia del pasado simple que simplificaría algunos diálogos. Supongo que no es lo mejor de Updike, aunque me da una idea sobre su temática y su estilo literario.
December 12, 2017
This set gets off to a good start with the title short story, "Trust Me." The third story in is even better and ends beautifully with the words, "I'll protect you." But the fourth story, "The City" is the best of the bunch: a man becomes ill while in a strange town and he's lost and entirely at the mercy of the unknowable. And that is the central problem with this collection as for me it was downhill from there. And at one point, in "Leaf Season", the third story from the last, Updike gives us 26 characters (or was it 23 and 3 dogs?) within 32 pages, and I was lost, just like the man in "The City." I don't know, maybe that was the whole point. But I had a hard time with the last two stories as the author just simply lost my attention. I recommend highly the first four stories, at least, if you want a taste of the best of this author's work. (And, yes, I read these 22 stories over a period of 21 days, two the first day and then one a day thereafter, as from the first two stories my expectation for the rest shot through the roof, but I wasn't rewarded as expected.)
October 1, 2019
With his full and vivid imagination, John Updike once again seduced me into his breathing suburban worlds. Each of the stories tackle such meaningful social constructs(particularly in the arena of adult relationships), in that special surreally penetrating way, that only Updike's words can lift the curtain on. As a collection the stories complemented each other so well and really gave the book a sense of solidity.
Thoughts:
Trust Me: How trust in and of itself is selfish. You can't give someone your experience of something. Pure experience can not be shared or captured no matter the level of trust. Trust as a commodity.
Killing: Experience comes through contact. Death is the absence of motion. Places familiar to others unknown to us. *The grocery store part*. All the grocery stores I'll never enter. Mundanity of death.
*Still of Some Use: Pastimes as protection against death. Forgotten fun. Inability to let go. * The exploding board games*. Recapturing the past. Ascent of age is the descent of childhood.
The City: Loneliness as a path to discovery. The beauty of places we will never call home and all the life there. How loneliness is beyond our control: Appendicitis.
The Lovely Troubled Daughters Of Our Old Crowd: Fear of change and the unknown stifles growth. How fears and insecurities are transferred from generation to generation.
*Unstuck: How trust and teamwork are the most important aspects of a relationship. Snow as the frozen subconscious/sex life. Teamwork and trust facilitate growth and motion and how they destroy insecurities.
*A Constellation of Events: The beauty of mistakes. Mistakes aren't made they just happen. "Time suppressed everything if you waited." Snow as the frozen subconscious.
Deaths of Distant Friends: Thought this was awful until the last paragraph. Mercy. All will be forgotten in time and therefore forgiven.
Pygmalion: If there's one thing I dislike about Updike it's the names of his characters. Didn't like this story at all.
*More Stately Mansions: All growth leads to death. "She was love-starved. So was I." All containers are empty. All substance is fleeting. Containers say nothing of the substance they hold.
Learn a Trade: Uselessness of passion. Success is a failure to another set of goals. The interchangeability of success and failure.
The Ideal Village: Thought this was awful until the last sentence. Our ideas of perfection are just that: ideas. Reality rarely matches our conception of what we want it to be.
One More Interview: How we hate the past but yet constantly seek to feel the feelings of it. Lost love and what could have been.
The Other: Grass is always greener. Fantasy better than reality.
Slippage: The confusion of fantasy and reality.
Poker Night: Very weak story. Awful ending. Trite and banal.
Made in Heaven: Our unrealistic expectations of people and how we can be blind to every sign of change if our belief is strong enough.
Getting into the Set: The pointlessness of keeping up appearances. Acceptance.
*The Wallet: Confusion and the unimportance of material possessions. What we place value on and how value is easily lost. How death can't come too soon.
*Leaf Season: Long story but the payoff felt good. Letting go and the importance of the freedom it brings. Death begets life. How all is transient.
Beautiful Husbands: Inability to control our desire/lust.
*The Other Woman: Betrayal. That special type of trust a real secret creates. True forgiveness. Chance. Knowing.
Thoughts:
Trust Me: How trust in and of itself is selfish. You can't give someone your experience of something. Pure experience can not be shared or captured no matter the level of trust. Trust as a commodity.
Killing: Experience comes through contact. Death is the absence of motion. Places familiar to others unknown to us. *The grocery store part*. All the grocery stores I'll never enter. Mundanity of death.
*Still of Some Use: Pastimes as protection against death. Forgotten fun. Inability to let go. * The exploding board games*. Recapturing the past. Ascent of age is the descent of childhood.
The City: Loneliness as a path to discovery. The beauty of places we will never call home and all the life there. How loneliness is beyond our control: Appendicitis.
The Lovely Troubled Daughters Of Our Old Crowd: Fear of change and the unknown stifles growth. How fears and insecurities are transferred from generation to generation.
*Unstuck: How trust and teamwork are the most important aspects of a relationship. Snow as the frozen subconscious/sex life. Teamwork and trust facilitate growth and motion and how they destroy insecurities.
*A Constellation of Events: The beauty of mistakes. Mistakes aren't made they just happen. "Time suppressed everything if you waited." Snow as the frozen subconscious.
Deaths of Distant Friends: Thought this was awful until the last paragraph. Mercy. All will be forgotten in time and therefore forgiven.
Pygmalion: If there's one thing I dislike about Updike it's the names of his characters. Didn't like this story at all.
*More Stately Mansions: All growth leads to death. "She was love-starved. So was I." All containers are empty. All substance is fleeting. Containers say nothing of the substance they hold.
Learn a Trade: Uselessness of passion. Success is a failure to another set of goals. The interchangeability of success and failure.
The Ideal Village: Thought this was awful until the last sentence. Our ideas of perfection are just that: ideas. Reality rarely matches our conception of what we want it to be.
One More Interview: How we hate the past but yet constantly seek to feel the feelings of it. Lost love and what could have been.
The Other: Grass is always greener. Fantasy better than reality.
Slippage: The confusion of fantasy and reality.
Poker Night: Very weak story. Awful ending. Trite and banal.
Made in Heaven: Our unrealistic expectations of people and how we can be blind to every sign of change if our belief is strong enough.
Getting into the Set: The pointlessness of keeping up appearances. Acceptance.
*The Wallet: Confusion and the unimportance of material possessions. What we place value on and how value is easily lost. How death can't come too soon.
*Leaf Season: Long story but the payoff felt good. Letting go and the importance of the freedom it brings. Death begets life. How all is transient.
Beautiful Husbands: Inability to control our desire/lust.
*The Other Woman: Betrayal. That special type of trust a real secret creates. True forgiveness. Chance. Knowing.
September 4, 2024
In Trust Me, John Updike displays one after another masterful short story about a very average moment, weekend, month, or couple of years in the lives of the financially comfortable who are ageing less than gracefully in wholly undramatic fashion. The tales carry the typical 20th century humdrum themes of slowly disintegrating careers, relationships, and bodies. And Updike expertly steers them all toward a mildly poignant middle ground that you'd expect of real life counterparts rather than taking them from crises to climaxes. His ability to make utterly unremarkable events into beautifully complete tales is quite remarkable and satisfyingly enjoyable to absorb.
June 24, 2012
The Sixties
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★★★★☆ After renewing this three times from the library without reading it, I’ve been picking away at this all month, motivated by the need for a “U” author to fulfill an A-Z Authors Challenge. Easy to do so, as these 22 are all pretty short stories ranging from three to 21 pages. I’m not big on infidelity, of which Mr. Updike writes a ton; however, he is absolutely brilliant at capturing a character in a short amount of time or conveying a theme in the most mundane of settings and everyday life. His characters are not particularly likeable, but he sure reveals them masterfully. Written in the 1960’s, the dialogues are spot-on as well as the issues.
Trust Me
Killing
Still of Some Use
The City
The Lovely Troubled Daughters of Our Old Crowd
Unstuck
A Constellation of Events
Deaths of Distant Friends
Pygmalion
More Stately Mansions
Learn a Trade
The Ideal Village
One More Interview
The Other
Slippage
Poker Night
Made in Heaven
Getting into the Set
The Wallet
Leaf Season
Beautiful Husbands
The Other Woman
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★★★★☆ After renewing this three times from the library without reading it, I’ve been picking away at this all month, motivated by the need for a “U” author to fulfill an A-Z Authors Challenge. Easy to do so, as these 22 are all pretty short stories ranging from three to 21 pages. I’m not big on infidelity, of which Mr. Updike writes a ton; however, he is absolutely brilliant at capturing a character in a short amount of time or conveying a theme in the most mundane of settings and everyday life. His characters are not particularly likeable, but he sure reveals them masterfully. Written in the 1960’s, the dialogues are spot-on as well as the issues.
Trust Me
Killing
Still of Some Use
The City
The Lovely Troubled Daughters of Our Old Crowd
Unstuck
A Constellation of Events
Deaths of Distant Friends
Pygmalion
More Stately Mansions
Learn a Trade
The Ideal Village
One More Interview
The Other
Slippage
Poker Night
Made in Heaven
Getting into the Set
The Wallet
Leaf Season
Beautiful Husbands
The Other Woman
March 27, 2017
These are some of Updike's best stories and at least two of my all-time favorites. He's gotten older now and his ability to capture the passage of time is remarkable, like Proust but with fewer pages. (He'd like that comparison and the alliteration, too, unfortunately.) He's as sex crazed as ever, though in these stories, the physical acts take on a geriatric flair. I find it interesting. The details of later life, of aged bodies. Thanks for going there, John. It almost helps forgive your insufferable WASPyness, the misogyny that underlies every female character you ever wrote.
If you don't feel like an extended stay in the leafy, money laden exurbs of Boston and New York, at least look at "The Other" and "More Stately Mansions." Two perfect stories about love lost, their conceptual syntax is as pure as Chekhov.
If you don't feel like an extended stay in the leafy, money laden exurbs of Boston and New York, at least look at "The Other" and "More Stately Mansions." Two perfect stories about love lost, their conceptual syntax is as pure as Chekhov.
February 10, 2011
In this collection of short stories loosely centered around a common theme of trust, Updike once again does a wonderful job of portraying imperfect relationships and human emotions. While he doesn't stray too far from his familiar milieu of adulterous, upper-crust New Englanders, he tells their stories in a way that makes you feel like you too are among them, sipping drinks and coveting your friends' wife in between bouts of tennis and trips to the vacation home.
There wasn't a single story out of the 22 that I didn't enjoy, but I would point to "The Lovely Troubled Daughters of Our Old Crowd", "Deaths of Distant Friends", "Still of Some Use", "Killing", and "Beautiful Husbands" as the book's highlights.
There wasn't a single story out of the 22 that I didn't enjoy, but I would point to "The Lovely Troubled Daughters of Our Old Crowd", "Deaths of Distant Friends", "Still of Some Use", "Killing", and "Beautiful Husbands" as the book's highlights.
August 20, 2021
Is there any other author who masters mid-20th-century New England suburbia marital conflict quite like John Updike? I've always loved how complete his stories feel. I hold my breath reading each story's last paragraph because I know he's going to wrap it all up from the beginning to end, almost like a nursery rhyme. Some stories work better than others (maybe depending on how much rich white dude marital woes you're willing to follow and fall into) but I love how he captures adult dynamics and the "performance" of it all (dinner parties, keeping house, having the perfect kids). Plus there's something alluring about reading the story of someone who's facing a crisis or fork in the road or general disconnect from the world around them, which allows them to see through the "bullshit"--whether or not the character is actually enlightened is up to the reader. He has this way of riding the line between sympathizing with an unsympathetic character (who often treats the people around them like they're side characters or in the periphery) and zooming out enough to wink at the audience so we know he's in on the joke. Maybe I just love characters who are unsatisfied with life, seek a fix in the wrong places, become disillusioned and never reach the happiness they want?
October 18, 2019
I gave the book away/'paid it forward'... I did get as far as through 'The City' at least, which was a positive story: so a good place to end my reading. Back-story: I left the book alone in a public place for five minutes and when I came back to the room, a stranger had picked the book up and was avidly reading the Updyke, story after story... As we were both forced to wait a while longer there (the public place was a car dealership waiting room...), and the stranger continued her reading, I 'gifted' her the book to take home for herself at the last moment, since I myself had gotten it for free anyway ... Hope she enjoyed...
June 18, 2020
This collection of short stories has not aged well. It did make me think about what it takes for a story to hold up over time. Maybe short stories are at a disadvantage because their characters can’t be fully drawn? Maybe they are given a situation to respond to and having responded, we leave them. There is no growth, no change. We can’t wonder how these characters would have reacted given a different set of circumstances. They are white men who were handed the world and somehow ruined it for themselves and everyone else.
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July 6, 2022This book is a compilation of short stories he wrote between 1962 and 1987 with a common theme of marital infidelity and trust. My old-style paperback was printed in 1988. I assume this also was Loren's since it is similar in style to Roger's Version. I enjoyed these stories very much. I am interested in different treatments of marital happiness and dissatisfaction. All of the stories take place in New England with upper middle class characters - very much John Updike settings. Although a bit yellowed, it otherwise is in good condition, so I will be donating this book.
December 16, 2023
Collections of short stories are difficult to fix in one's memory unless they have staying power individually. What this collection of stories by John Updike left this reader was a sense or lingering atmosphere of people seeking connection and belonging and love.
"Trust Me" - title story about a young boy who leaps into his swimming father's arms only to be dropped; a story about fear and the trust we put in those who are supposed to take care of us, whether that be parents or spouses or children; how that trust shifts subtly as we age
"Trust Me" - title story about a young boy who leaps into his swimming father's arms only to be dropped; a story about fear and the trust we put in those who are supposed to take care of us, whether that be parents or spouses or children; how that trust shifts subtly as we age
April 10, 2025
I've read a lot of Updike this year, so now what stands out to me isn't the gorgeous prose but the beautiful manner in which he constructs stories. His most successful stories center around a specific idea, with less focus on conforming to the typical narrative arch. The ones I particularly enjoyed: "Still of Some Use," "The City," "Unstuck," "Deaths of Different Friends," "More Stately Mansions," "Learn a Trade," "The Other," "Poker Night," and "Made in Heaven."
This was a great way to wind down each night!
This was a great way to wind down each night!
May 23, 2018
Would you like to drown in sadness and melancholia? Are you sad that you're growing old and your kids are all grown up and life is flashing by? Would you like to make yourself sadder? Then by all means.....enjoy John Updike's depressing and exceptionally well written stories. They're chock full of subtly expressed despair and loss. I give it 5 stars for the writing but two stars for the gloomy bummer aspect.
January 25, 2019
Not a review, but a reaction.
Other than "Still of Some Use" and "More Stately Mansions" this collection of short stories fell slightly flat for this reader. Solid writing, but hardly any room for the reader to turn inward, in fact, there was very little room for the reader at all. I'd almost go so far as to say I felt endured rather than welcome.
Very little intimacy or Sehnsucht, And when I consider the title of this work, I can't help but feel slighted.
Other than "Still of Some Use" and "More Stately Mansions" this collection of short stories fell slightly flat for this reader. Solid writing, but hardly any room for the reader to turn inward, in fact, there was very little room for the reader at all. I'd almost go so far as to say I felt endured rather than welcome.
Very little intimacy or Sehnsucht, And when I consider the title of this work, I can't help but feel slighted.
January 28, 2021
So, let me get this straight, in Updike's world a) everyone is cheating, b) if you are not cheating, you will get cancer, and c) all women are a bit overweight, d) it's okay that all women are a bit overweight, because men secretly like that. By the last few stories I was just as exhausted with these character's mundane lives as they were.
March 14, 2023
The stories feel dated (upper class, white, married people feeling adrift and having affairs, etc., in the Northeast) but the writing is so SO good and the plotlines stick with me, sometimes in discomfiting ways. I found this in a used bookstore while traveling - can't quite finish it and might look for something else of Updike's at some point.
April 4, 2025
It took me a while to get through due to never being connected to any of the characters. Yet each protagonist has in common a solemnity and quiet grace which makes them feel as though they are part of the same soul. The prose in these short stories is at times intoxicating and the themes and ideas very poignant. Highly recommend.
April 19, 2019
My fave stories in this book:
- More Stately Mansions
- Leaf Season
- The City
- One More Interview
- The Other
This book is just what it says on the tin. If you like stories about philandering heterosexual couples and/or Updike's florid prose, check it out. Otherwise, move on.
- More Stately Mansions
- Leaf Season
- The City
- One More Interview
- The Other
This book is just what it says on the tin. If you like stories about philandering heterosexual couples and/or Updike's florid prose, check it out. Otherwise, move on.
August 3, 2019
(Mostly) Read in Cambridge. Borrowed from the shelves of the second AirBNB. It was a joy to come back to Updike: what writing!! No one else can write a series of simple words into such an evocative sentence. I’m not a big fan of short stories: but these were fab. Not quite finished.
August 15, 2018
DULL DULL DULL. Boring people having boring crises. The stories never improve. Skip this book—there are many better options.
July 9, 2019
3.5 stars
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