My Father's Tears
By John Updike
304 pages; Knopf

In the title story of John Updike's posthumous collection, a college-bound adolescent narrator notes the glitter of his father's eyes as the two part ways at a train station, and understands that "time consumes us." That dark knowledge flows through My Father's Tears , all but one of its stories written over the past decade as, with a wink and a prayer, the aging Updike continued to tease apart enigmas of attachment and loss. His debonair sentences make grace out of chaos—the artistry of a spirit too bright to disappear.

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