The theme of memory, touched upon in the dedicatory epigraph, runs through this collection of short stories. For many of the characters, the past is a miraculous land perpetually in need of rediscovery. These stories concern an America where most of us are exiles and where moving automobiles contain a good fraction of our lives. Mr. Updike, in the course of writing them, moves from the comic romance of "The Persistence of Desire" and "Still Life" to the somber monologue of the two multiple-titled montages that end the book. On the way, soliloquies are delivered by an angel, an A & P clerk, and a lifeguard, and dialogues take place between a man and his wife, a man and his child, a boy and his mother, a boy and his minister, and several guests and hosts. The setting is generally the northeastern United States, most often Pennsylvania.

Contents:

• Walter Briggs
• The Persistence of Desire
• Still Life
• Flight
• Should Wizard Hit Mommy?
• A Sense of Shelter
• Dear Alexandros
• Wife-Wooing
• Pigeon Feathers
• Home
• Archangel
• You'll Never Know, Dear, How Much I Love You
• The Astronomer
• A & P
• The Doctor's Wife
• Lifeguard
• The Crow in the Woods
• The Blessed Man of Boston, My Grandmother's Thimble, and Fanning Island
• Packed Dirt, Churchgoing, A Dying Cat, a Traded Car