The Afterlife and Other Stories
336 pages
|Published: 25 Oct 1994
|Editions
|Details
This edition
ISBN: 9780449912010
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Publication date: 27 August 1996
Description
“Marvelously moving. . . These tales evoke a certain peace and a definite wonder at what an astonishingly graceful writer Updike is. ”— USA Today
To the hero of the title story of this collection, all of England has the glow of an “A miraculous lacquer lay upon everything, beading each roadside twig. . . each reed of thatch, each tiny daisy trembling in the grass. ” All of these stories, each in its own way, partake of this glow, as life beyond middle age is explored and found to have its own exquisite dearness. As death approaches, existence takes on, for some of Updike’s aging characters, 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. Here is a world where wonder stubbornly persists, and fresh beginnings almost outnumber losses.
To the hero of the title story of this collection, all of England has the glow of an “A miraculous lacquer lay upon everything, beading each roadside twig. . . each reed of thatch, each tiny daisy trembling in the grass. ” All of these stories, each in its own way, partake of this glow, as life beyond middle age is explored and found to have its own exquisite dearness. As death approaches, existence takes on, for some of Updike’s aging characters, 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. Here is a world where wonder stubbornly persists, and fresh beginnings almost outnumber losses.
