This is John Updike’s largest and most various collection of short stories. Some, such as the title story, have the tone and personality of essays; others objectify the chimeras of middle-class existence; a number of vignettes reflect the face of America in the fictional microcosm of Tarbox; the longest story, a hallucinatory trip up the Nile, allegorizes our foreign policy. In the second section of the collection, Updike tries on ten surreal modes and ornaments his texts with an array of stolen illustrations. Lastly, five stories portray the evolving, everlasting marriage of the Maples, an imaginary couple whose first appearance in The New Yorker dates back to 1956.