“My Father’s Tears and Other Stories”

In “My Father’s Tears and Other Stories,” John Updike’s last work, protagonists wander empty roads searching for a way to ensure remembrance for their small contributions. Witnesses of the 9/11 terrorist attacks watch their lives collapse before their very eyes, as times change and people become hard. The Washington Post says, “Hints of death and dying faintly tinge every story, but there is no pathos or urging to not go gently into that good night; there is just the realist’s ironic shrug over the way things are and a healthy appreciation for the largely unrecognized heroism of facing life’s decline . . .” Updike explores the mystery of the mundane and “compresses the strata of a life in his delicately rendered, tremendously moving posthumous collection” (Publishers Weekly). In the words of Martin Amis, writing for the Guardian, “Updike’s creations live, and authorial love is what sustains them.”