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John Updike’s greatest literary talent was his ability to infuse mundane events with relevance. Early novels like The Centaur and Couples declare, in glittering prose, that every experience overflows with meaning, especially as it’s happening. But in his later works, most plainly his final novel, The Widows of Eastwick, the writer, who died in January, seemed too intent on busying himself with memories of missed opportunities and decisions long past, rather than the life in progress.

My Father’s Tears, Updike’s final short-story collection, finds the author throwing a creative fastball, but again his characters often slouch under the weight of their memories. Not much happens in these stories; rather, plenty did happen, often decades earlier. In ‘The Walk with Elizanne’, an encounter at a high-school reunion inspires recollections of when childish innocence first stumbled into the complicated romances of adulthood. ‘Delicate Wives’ explores a familiar Updike trope: the ego of an aging man as he considers the life of an ex-lover.

There are gems like ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’, where Updike approaches 9/11 from the perspectives of several different characters, with a tender and honest touch as affecting as Don DeLillo’s Falling Man. There are evocative travelogues set in Morocco, India, and Spain. Familiar themes are also on display: the relationships between parents and children, infidelity, escape, death and the fussy machinations of private moments, like an old man’s consideration of his nightly glass of water. Despite a few clunkers, in every story there is at least one detail that declares the story as uniquely Updike, the product of a writer who clearly possessed a deep reservoir of talent and empathy.

Published by Knopf