Too Far to Go

“Updike sees his subject as being, in part, ‘what Freud called “normal human unhappiness,” ’ [and his] greatest delineation of it comes in the stories about Richard and Joan Maple, a young married couple who get off to a shaky start in the fifties and shakily stay together for twenty-some years. . . . This is prime Updike.”—The Boston Phoenix
 
“The Maples speak out loud and clear, and very much in their own voices. . . . ‘Your Lover Just Called,’ most of which is written in dialogue, is a story of classic perfection, worthy of Maupassant or Chekhov.”—Brooke Allen
 
“These scenes from a marriage encapsulate what many associate with classic Updike. . . . They are painstaking portraits of a bygone era . . . described in luscious, luminous prose.”—The Christian Science Monitor