My Father's Tears and Other Stories (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780307271563)

A sensational collection of stories of the American experience from the Depression to the aftermath of 9/11, by one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century and the author of the acclaimed Rabbit series.

John Updike mingles narratives of Pennsylvania with stories of New England suburbia and of foreign travel: "Personal Archaeology" considers life as a sequence of half-buried layers, and "The Full Glass" distills a lifetime's happiness into one brimming moment of an old man's bedtime routine. High-school class reunions, in "The Walk with Elizanne" and "The Road Home," restore their hero to youth's commonwealth where, as the narrator of the title story confides, "the self I value is stored, however infrequently I check on its condition." Exotic locales encountered in the journeys of adulthood include Morocco, Florida, Spain, Italy, and India. The territory of childhood, with its fundamental, formative mysteries, is explored in "The Guardians," "The Laughter of the Gods," and "Kinderszenen." Love's fumblings among the bourgeoisie yield the tart comedy of "Free," "Delicate Wives," "The Apparition," and "Outage."

Author: John Updike
ISBN-10: 0307271560
ISBN-13: 9780307271563
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Language: English
Published: 06/02/2009
Pages: 304
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.02lbs
Size: 8.04h x 5.60w x 1.13d

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 02/01/2009 pg. 54
Booklist 03/15/2009 pg. 4
Publishers Weekly 03/30/2009 pg. 29
Library Journal 04/01/2009 pg. 72
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2009
Village Voice 03/25/2009 pg. 38
New York Times Book Review 06/07/2009 pg. 11
New York Review of Books 06/11/2009 pg. 8
Entertainment Weekly 06/05/2009 pg. 8
People Weekly 06/15/2009 pg. 59
New York Times Book Review 06/14/2009 pg. 18
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/06/2009 pg. 21
Booklist Editors Choice/Adult 01/01/2010 pg. 9
BookPage 06/01/2009