At least five out of the 23 stories [in Problems and Other Stories] rivet: "Transaction," "The Egg Race," "Separating," "The Faint," "Daughter, Last Glimpses Of." But Updike can be portentous and pretentious in his short-shorts, which, while dealing summarily with the same subjects as his full-bodied stories (separation, divorce, grieved children, living alone, middle age), are built upon arty structures and laced with significant quotes…. (p. 231)
The stories of separation and divorce that constitute the core of the book all manifest the thought the narrator's wife (who has left him) has in the story "Nevada": turning forty was "as if then you began a return journey that could not be broken." In these stories, whether the husband or the wife has been abandoned, the passion of life remains linked with the first partner and the time life was still hopeful. The second wives are pale ghosts beside the vividness of life lived with the first. Bonds remain because of this, and equally because of the children (all of whom suffer intensely in these stories because of their parents' separation). The remarried husband cannot quite remember, as he faces his first wife and his beloved children, why he has left her. The detritus of middle age is present: infidelity, arthritis, friends who are cancer victims, hospitals, prostitutes, class reunions. The winding down.
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