The Maples Stories (Everyman's Library Pocket Classics)

This is series of related short stories about a fictional couple, The Maples. The stories are connected, but were not written one right after the other. They were written intermittently over many years. They start out as a newly wed couple and proceed on through life. I found many of the stories to be quite excellent. I listened to an audiobook, narrated by Peter Van Norden while reading along on Kindle. I am very glad I did so. The narrator was excellent and really added to the experience.These stories can stand up on their own. However, I read them in the order they were written and I am really glad that I did so. I felt as though I was getting to know the couple and the family. There were times I did not like one of them, then, perhaps later, the other. Such is life... Two of my very favorite stories, "Here Come The Maples" and "Grandparenting" were the last two stories.As a possible irrelevant aside, I usually try to find unusual words that I think an author has become enamored with. In this work, my nominee is "homunculus", or a variation, "homunculi", which appear three times throughout these fine stories. The only time I have encountered the concept of homunculus in fiction heretofore is by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in "Faust", Part Two. I do not have the slightest idea if Updike was inspired by Goethe. As I understand it there are other works, but I have not sought or otherwise come across the term in literary fiction.Personally, I feel very lucky to have come upon this collection. The only work I had previously read of John Updike was "Rabbit Run". I disliked that work as much as I liked these stories. Based on that experience I had actually developed an aversion to Updike and was in no hurry whatsoever to read him again, if ever. I have changed my mind, although unless the Rabbit Series changes stylistically, I have no need to read more of them. I have a copy of "The Poorhouse Fair", an early novel, that I am going to give a try. It has mixed reviews, but I like reading author's early works.In summary, I really liked this collection. I am not one to suggest that others spend additional money. But I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed the audiobook narration of Peter Van Norden.Thank You...

John Updike's "The Maples Stories" are a collection of eighteen short stories, written over Mr. Updike's career, that chronicle the marriage, separation, and divorce of Joan and Richard Maples and their four children. The writing is superb, at times frighteningly honest and other times frighteningly surreal. The author has captured the dissolution of a marriage brilliantly, so brilliantly that if anyone is thinking of getting married I would recommend not reading this wonderful collection.It has been a long time since I have read any of Mr. Updike's works. Actually, the last time was 1996 on an airplane ride, on Thanksgiving Day, from Los Angeles to New York. After reading this collection of stories, I definitely see more of Mr. Updike's works in my future. He is one of a few writers whose use 'of a stream of consciousness' heightens the narrative and who James Joyce I think would happily approve.

How wonderful and how poignant to have the tragicomic saga of the marriage of Richard and Joan Maples appear at long last in one slender and beautifully bound volume. Wonderful because when read together, these individual short stories, authored by John Updike over a period of almost 40 years, emerge as something considerably greater than the sum of the parts. Poignant because they are appearing now, in the year when Updike, America's foremost and perhaps last man of letters passed away, leaving us to remember, to miss, and to celebrate him through his humane and witty short stories, novels, and essays.The stories in this book trace the brief rise and prolonged fall of a quintessentially American marriage that begins with a "Snowfall in Greenwich Village" early in the age of Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower and ends with "Grand Parenting " (1993) just before the dawn of the Bill and Hillary Clinton era. In between, the Maples experience most of the joys and all of the sorrows of modern middle class marriage, playing catch up with the 60s sexual revolution, navigating the tides of easy divorce and painful reconciliations, second families, lovers who just won't stop calling at home (Your Lover Just Called), and almost everything else that undercut but at the same time energized American marriage and family life in the latter half of the 20th century. Not all the stories are pretty, and some of the scenes are downright ugly (and all too realistic), and yet through it all, the Maples, as they drift apart, reconcile, separate and finally divorce, show more vitality, joy in living, and yes, true love for each other, than many "happily" married couples ever achieve.As a richly documented narrative of the American Century, or least the post-WWII part of it, viewed through the lens of one marriage and two lives, the Maples stories collected here are, in my opinion, second only to the the four volume Rabbit tetralogy (Rabbit Run, Rabbit Redux, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest) in achieving a moving fictional reality. In a way, I feel I got to know the Maples as well or better than I knew the Angstroms, and while I felt that the dangerously over-educated Maple's problems were far more their own fault, often arising out of their own superficiality and over intellectualizing of basic human emotions and erotic urges, I cannot help being drawn to to them by their often misguided, but heroic attempts to find some sort of accommodation between the life they were leading and the life they wanted to lead, or at least thought they wanted to lead if they could only move on. The path was strewn with loneliness tears, and misery, but in the end, the Maples, like Rabbit Angstrom, achieved something more than just a life -- -- they achieved lives lived, if not well, at least lived fully, in some sort of love with each other, and finally, as we leave them, surviving to the rueful joys of shared grand parenthood.In short, this collection of stories, while too brief and ending long before we would like it to, turns out to be more than the sum of its parts, and despite its brevity, immensely worthwhile. A lot like the Maple's marriage, in fact.

An incredible series of short stories which clearly trace the author's real life with grace, beauty, love, betrayal and deep understanding. Anyone who has been married (and maybe even those who have not) will recognize much that goes on in these stories which span the life and death of a marriage, its aftermath, the children, and pretty much everything there can be between two people. John Updike at his best.

Has all the best qualities of Updike’s writing. He’s not a must-read these days but his work will endure.

Love it because I love John Updike!!

This author is amazing. I aspire to be even half this good. This book may seem old fashioned to some but is a very good example of writing. They don't make 'em like they used to.

The Maples Stories is a collection of 18 short stories about the marriage of an American couple, which are presented in chronological order starting from the early days of their marriage in the mid-1950s through to their becoming grandparents in the early 1990s, making the book similar to a novel. Interestingly these stories were written intermittently over Updike’s career and were only later grouped together in one book. Updike’s writing is excellent across all of these stories, which are presented in a beautiful Everyman’s Pocket Classic hardback volume.

Updike wrote the eighteen stories which form this book over a period of twenty years, the first appearing in 1956. But although they were written separately, they form a cohesive whole: the book might almost be considered a serial novel. The stories chronicle the marriage of Richard and Joan Maple, a middle class American couple which one assumes is a fictional portrait of Updike and his first wife.We drop in on Richard and Joan at regular intervals. We see them having children, giving blood, attending a Peace march, taking a vacation in Rome, crashing a car into a telephone pole, carrying on affairs, going to a beach, divorcing and finally meeting up to attend the birth of a grandchild.Updike's goal was to convey the magic of everyday life, to 'give the mundane its beautiful due', and he writes in a poetic style, favouring unusual vocabulary, comparisons and turns of phrase. It's high-risk prose: occasionally the stories seem over-written, excessively literary, but more often his descriptions surprise and convince. For example, when he writes of Richard that 'Every cell of his body was composed of her cooking', he captures a kind of marital intimacy that had not occured to me.I listened to the recording of the Maples Stories made by Peter van Norden for AudioGo in 2009. His attractive American voice is just right for Updike: hopefully he will record some of the author's other books. The choice of cover art, a painting by William Nicholson, is also excellent. It depicts a woman much as one imagines Joan Maple: beautiful, elegant and aloof.

These stories are so well written I read them again and again.

I believe that Updike wrote this book to chronicle, through a set of linked stories, the stereotypical American middle-class marriage that began in the booming 1950s, succumbed to the hedonistic pursuits of that generation, and ended twenty years later in divorce and remarriage.Richard and Joan Maple are your typical American couple of the ‘50’s, he’s an office worker and she’s the stay-at-home mother of four and the daughter of a liberal theology professor, prone to take up causes that do not mirror her social status. Theirs is not a marriage of passion and commitment but one of fulfilling the procreational expectations of their generation while partaking selfishly of what the sexual revolution of the 60’s bestowed upon middle-class, entitled and bored America.The first seven years of marriage and the arrival of the three older children keep them engaged and interested in each other. Richard fantasizes over his wife’s earthiness as she starts to gain weight while also lusting over Joan’s close friends. Then comes the fourth (probably unplanned) child and the drifting apart of this married couple. Sex becomes boring. They take a trip to Rome to revitalize their romance, but conclude that he is Classic while she is Baroque.The crisis of a possible separation temporarily averted, Joan gets actively involved in the Civil Rights movement which Richard finds boring. One night, while drunk and driving home from a party, Richard wraps his car around a telephone pole. While Joan goes for help, Richard gives in to his lust and passionately goes at it with their separated friend Eleanor inside the damaged car. But he is not the only transgressor, for soon afterwards, Richard catches Joan and Eleanor’s husband Mack kissing in their kitchen. These transgressions amplify over time – while in bed, Joan even discloses to Richard all the lovers she has had on the side, and all the lovers she knows he has had on his side. They don’t only have lovers but red herrings to try and divert each other off the scent of infidelity. They still need each other though, for the relationship has moved from Behaviour to Being, and Joan needs Richard in her life although the sex between them is lousy.When the final separation comes after 19 years of marriage, and the news is broken to the children, the question on everyone's lips, expressed only by Richard Jr. is: “Why?” After Richard moves out, the separated couple meet regularly for dinner and discuss each other’s new lovers. And yet, there is something these lovers cannot replace, something that Richard and Joan had between them:He saw through her words to what she was saying – that these lovers, however we love them, are not us, are not sacred as reality is sacred. We are reality. We have made children. We gave each other our young bodies. We promised to grow old together.After the split comes the remorse, for one year afterwards they are miserable and regretful. The divorce ceremony, when it comes, despite much preparation and trepidation turns out to be a non-event, due to the new “ no fault" rule.The final linked story sees Richard and Joan as expectant grandparents, now long married to their illicit lovers at the time of their split, Ruth and Andy respectively. They are meeting for daughter Judith’s confinement. This is no different than any set of couples of second marriages interacting in the close confines of a hospital amidst the great anticipation and nervousness of the first grandchild being born. Despite the abundance of life and procreation around him, Richard realizes that he cannot claim any credit for it. Updike delivers a superb closing line to illustrate this: “Nobody belongs to us, except in memory.”

Great book. Brand new. Excellent reading. Got it in time as suggested