The Afterlife: And Other Stories - Softcover

Updike, John

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140245065 ISBN 13: 9780140245066

Publisher: Penguin, 1996

Synopsis

This is a collection of stories which look back on the past. They include stories of moving to the country as a young boy; of seeing the city house they left behind transformed by other occupants over the years; and the ways in which a strong woman lives on in her only son.

About this title

Review:

" Quintessential Updike....These tales are elegies for lost youth and receding passions."
-- The New York Times
" If one trait can account for John Updike's staying power. it is the man's exquisite grasp of ordinary miracles....With his small mirages, his puddles left by both the heroic and the damned, Updike can turn the simple, misguided efforts of a man into a signature of song."
-- The Boston Globe
" Marvelously Moving...these tales evoke a certain peace and a definite wonder at what an astonishingly graceful writer Updike is."
-- USA Today
" John Updike has rarely written more affectingly, more from the center of his being....This collection is about the passing of generations, and the way that passing leaves people marooned.... Reviewing a novel of Vladimir Nabokov in 1964, Mr. Updike said, 'He writes prose the only way it should be written -- that is, ecstatically.' That ecstasy is evident on every page of The Afterlife."
-- The New York Times Book Review
" These are first-rate stories, thoughtful and wise."
-- The Cleveland Plain Dealer

"Quintessential Updike....These tales are elegies for lost youth and receding passions."
-- The New York Times
"If one trait can account for John Updike's staying power. it is the man's exquisite grasp of ordinary miracles....With his small mirages, his puddles left by both the heroic and the damned, Updike can turn the simple, misguided efforts of a man into a signature of song."
-- The Boston Globe
"Marvelously Moving...these tales evoke a certain peace and a definite wonder at what an astonishingly graceful writer Updike is."
-- USA Today
"John Updike has rarely written more affectingly, more from the center of his being....This collection is about the passing of generations, and the way that passing leaves people marooned.... Reviewing a novel of Vladimir Nabokov in 1964, Mr. Updike said, 'He writes prose the only way it should be written -- that is, ecstatically.' That ecstasy is evident on every page of The Afterlife."
-- The New Y

"Marvelously moving . . . These tales evoke a certain peace and a definite wonder at what an astonishingly graceful writer Updike is."--USA Today

"Quintessential Updike . . . These tales are elegies for lost youth and receding passions."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"If one trait can account for John Updike's staying power, it is the man's exquisite grasp of ordinary miracles. . . . With his small mirages, his puddles left by both the heroic and the damned, Updike can turn the simple, misguided efforts of a man into a signature of song."--The Boston Globe

About the Author:

John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He is the author of over fifty books, including The Poorhouse Fair; the Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest); Marry Me; The Witches of Eastwick, which was made into a major feature film; Memories of the Ford Administration; Brazil; In the Beauty of the Lilies; Toward the End of Time; Gertrude and Claudius; and Seek My Face. He has written a number of collections of short stories, including The Afterlife and Other Stories and Licks of Love, which includes a final Rabbit story, Rabbit Remembered. His essays and criticism first appeared in publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and are now collected into numerous volumes. Collected Poems 1953-1993 brings together almost all of his verse, and a new edition of his Selected Poems is forthcoming from Hamish Hamilton.

His novels, stories, and non-fiction collections have won have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award and the Howells Medal.

Updike graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year at Oxford's Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of staff at the New Yorker, and he lived in Massachusetts from 1957 until his death in January 2009.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0140245065
• ISBN 13: 9780140245066
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336