[1][2] All the stories are set in the fictional New England town of Shady Hill, where the suburbanite residents exist in an allegorical Hades: "a nice house with a garden and a place outside for cooking meat," and where "there was no turpitude; there had not been a divorce…there had not even been a breath of scandal.

"[8] Contemporary critical reaction to the volume noted Cheever's "growing significance" as a literary figure, but a number of reviewers detected "something a little vapid about the work.

"[9] Citing biographer Scott Donaldson, Patrick Meanor points out "that some critics were not pleased with the idea of a writer making the suburbs the subject matter of his work.

Many of these critics were New Yorkers, some of the working-class social strata of the Lower East Side who found little or no means of identifying with the problems of the relatively comfortable, college-educated business executives.

Even worse, he wrote about them with humor, compassion, and deep understanding, while simultaneously avoiding any obvious ethical or moral judgment on their life-style.