The volume was published posthumously in 2009 by Alfred A. Knopf and is the final collection to date of Updike’s stories.

[4] “Morocco” (The Atlantic, November 1979) “Personal Archaeology” (May 29, 2000) “Free” (January 8, 2001) “The Laughter of the Gods” (February 11, 2002) “Varieties of Religious Experience” (The Atlantic, November, 2002) “Spanish Prelude to a Second Marriage” (Harper’s Magazine, October 2002) “Delicate Wives” (February 2, 2004) “The Guardians” (March 26, 2001) “The Walk With Elizanne” (July 7, 2003) “The Accelerating Expansion of the Universe” (Harper’s Magazine, October 2004) “German Lessons” (Playboy, January 2006) “The Road Home” (February 7, 2005 [originally “The Roads of Home”]) “My Father’s Tears” (February 7, 2006) “Kinderszenen” (Harper’s Magazine, November 2006) “The Apparition” (The Atlantic, in its ‘Summer Fiction Issue’ 2007) “Blue Light” (Playboy, January 2008) “Outage” (January 7, 2008) “The Full Glass” (May 26, 2008) “For all the novels, the stories, the journalism, essays, poetry, wit and wisdom, his understanding of the US and of life, readers can only thank him.

John Updike has taken his final bow with a swan song worthy of his genius.” —Literary critic Eileen Battersby from “The Master Takes a Final Bow” in The Irish Times, June 20, 2009. Literary critic Simon Baker of The Guardian offers this mixed assessment of the collection: Some of these stories, while skilfully crafted, do not have sufficient plot or purpose to match the art of their construction; one always reads on, but the imbalance can leave you gawping in admiration at the quality of the sentences.

This, though, is only an occasional gripe: when Updike gets it right - when the wonder of his prose, the energy of his narrative, the keenness of his eye and the rehabilitating warmth of his artistic mind are all firing - the reader is left with the sense of having encountered modern American fiction in its near-perfect state.

[5]Calling the collection “a memory book”[6] literary critic Eileen Battersby registers high praise for the Updike’s posthumously issued collection of short fiction: My Fathers Tears and Other Stories appears to remind us of exactly how good Updike was and is.