The Afterlife and Other Stories

Updike, John

ISBN 10: 067943657X ISBN 13: 9780679436577

Publisher: Random House, 1994

Synopsis

2 cassettes / 3 hours
Read by the Author

Here is John Updike's first collection in seven years: stories that, in various ways, partake of a glow -- as life beyond middle age is explored and found to have its own particular amazements, from omniscient golf caddies to the deaths of mothers and 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 misperception lend the mundane an antic texture; and the backward view, lengthening, acquires a certain grandeur.

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

The stories included are: The Man Who Became a Soprano, The Afterlife, The Other Side of the Street, Farrell's Caddie, and Grandparenting.

About this title

From the Back Cover

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 prescient 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 misperception 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 decor have the presence of personalities. His is a world where innocence stubbornly persists, and fresh beginnings almost outnumber losses.

About the Author

John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Howell's Medal.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 067943657X
• ISBN 13: 9780679436577
• Binding: Audio Cassette
• Language: English