Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0679435832, Hardcover)

"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

AN ALTERNATE SELECTION OF THE BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB