The Maples Stories

Written over a period of more than twenty years, John Updike's stories about Richard and Joan Maple and their family sit handsomely together in this beautiful little volume. Indeed, so consistent is Updike's voice and characterisation that if you didn't know better, you'd think you were reading a novel.

As the author says in his introduction, 'Though the Maples stories trace the decline and fall of a marriage, they also illumine a history in many ways happy, of growing children and a million mundane moments shared'. Here are stories of cocktail party infidelities and casual emotional cruelty - after years of marriage, Joan and Richard know just how to needle each other - but Updike also gives us heartbreaking moments and Polaroid snapshots of family life.

Updike is a master of the sculpted sentence and the poised paragraph, but the Maples' story is never overwhelmed by the prose. They are a twentieth-century Everyfamily, taking pleasure and suffering in equal measure.