by John Updike
These short stories are so up-to-the-minute in their examination of marriage, parenthood, divorce, psychiatry and sex—especially sex—that it's almost as if those best-selling pop sociology authors get their cues from John Updike. He went through a divorce and a second marriage from 1971 to 1978, when these stories were written, and it's clear Updike is often writing about himself. In a story called "Transaction," he is as explicit as any pornographer in describing an encounter with a prostitute. He's funny when he calls a tale about a husband's shrink and a wife's shrink "The Fairy Godfathers." But what Updike does again and again is best described in a sentence in "From the Journal of a Leper": "Caressing Carlotta, my fingertips discovered a pimple at the nape of her neck." He's very good—when confronted by beauty and emotion—at detecting blemishes. (Knopf, $10)
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