by John Updike
First published 2009
These nineteen stories move through decades of American life, from small Pennsylvania towns to New England suburbs to distant shores in Morocco and India. Characters navigate high school reunions that pull them back to their younger selves, like the narrator in "The Walk with Elizanne" who finds his valued identity stored in youth's memories. An old man in "The Full Glass" discovers a lifetime of happiness concentrated in his nightly routine. Children in "The Guardians" and "Kinderszenen" encounter the mysteries that will shape them forever. Middle-aged suburbanites stumble through love's complications in "Free" and "Delicate Wives," while "Personal Archaeology" examines how lives accumulate in buried layers. The title story reveals a father's tears as windows into both personal loss and the larger American story, connecting individual grief to the national experience from economic collapse through the September 11 attacks.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, american, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Pennsylvania, New England, Morocco, India
Period: 20th Century, 21st Century
304 pages · Hardcover · Knopf