What readers think of My Father's Tears, plus links to write your own review.

Published in 2009 just a few months after John Updike's death at age 76, this collection of 18 short stories is a magnificent look at the world past and present. The keen observations—from the quotidian details of life during the Great Depression to doomed love affairs—are what make these stories of faith, infidelity, and the small choices we make in everyday life so resonant and powerful.

Some of my favorites:
• "The Walk with Elizanne": The high school class of 1950 is holding its 50th reunion in 2000, and David Kern encounters his first girlfriend—but doesn't immediately recognize her. Then all the thoughts! All the memories!

• "Varieties of Religious Experience": This is the story of 9/11 told through the viewpoints of a New York City survivor, someone trapped high in the World Trade Center, two of the hijackers, and passengers on one of the doomed flights, but they are all wrapped up in one man's loss of faith because God let it happen.

• "Delicate Wives": The story of a couple who had an illicit affair, break it off, and then reunite years later.

• "Kinderszenen": Life during the Great Depression as told through the viewpoint of a little boy, an only child living with his parents and grandparents in an old house that may have a ghost or two.

Beautifully written with distinct characters, but sometimes overlapping settings, this masterful collection is one to be savored. It is storytelling at its finest.

That's right, haven't read it, going to. Let me tell you why so you will read it too. John Updike inhabits each word he writes, each story, each book. He is without peer in chronicling the American suburban hearts, feelings, dreads, joys, and detail in living a life shaped by the recently deceased modern era. He inhabits each story, and you are with him, and I've traveled all his books. I've sat in car showrooms, boring suburban alcoholic afternoons, crisp moments of lost relationships, exuberance in exploring area forbidden to me, been inside the very human hearts and minds of people waking and living each day. Truly an American experience. Updike traveled, appeared, read from his books to the end of his life. What was it like to live in America? Read My Father's Tears, and enjoy the journey walking next to a true genius, hands clasped behind his back, walking uphill, talking the whole way, speaking these words into existence.