Trust Me

Rating:
Summary: John Updike---Master of the Short Story
Review: As far as short story collections go, this has to be one of Updike's best, also one of my favorite. I've read a lot of his work, and I believe that he is just getting better and better. The stories in this collection are beautifully written, solid and strong, and fascinating. I bought this book and read it in one setting. If you're just getting into Updike and his style, read this collection; if you're an Updike fan, you have to own it.

Rating:
Summary: John Updike---Master of the Short Story
Review: As far as short story collections go, this has to be one of Updike's best, also one of my favorite. I've read a lot of his work, and I believe that he is just getting better and better. The stories in this collection are beautifully written, solid and strong, and fascinating. I bought this book and read it in one setting. If you're just getting into Updike and his style, read this collection; if you're an Updike fan, you have to own it.

Rating:
Summary: Good stories
Review: If you are looking to be knocked on your butt by a short story book, forget this and go buy "The Stories of John Cheever" IMMEDIATELY. I would suggest that book to ANYONE. It is up there with "One Hundred Years of Solitude," "Beloved," and "A Separate Peace" as the best books I've read. But if you have read that and liked it, this book is a good one. I would have given it 3 1/2 stars if I could, but oh well. These stories are elegant, eloquent, and solid, but not as magical as the world John Cheever created. But the writing is good. The stories move. I was never bored, and I was even very moved sometimes. I think the best one in it is the one called "More Stately Mansions."

Rating:
Summary: A Good First Choice for the Updike Reader
Review: Men, women, what works and what does not - this seems to be the central theme of Trust Me. This was my first Updike book and as a collection of short stories, Trust Me represents a wise choice in this regard. The reader gets a taste of the Updike style in several short works which, despite being rich in detail and innuendo, are easily consumable - especially if read from start to finish without any long breaks.

Rating:
Summary: A Good First Choice for the Updike Reader
Review: Men, women, what works and what does not - this seems to be the central theme of Trust Me. This was my first Updike book and as a collection of short stories, Trust Me represents a wise choice in this regard. The reader gets a taste of the Updike style in several short works which, despite being rich in detail and innuendo, are easily consumable - especially if read from start to finish without any long breaks.

Rating:
Summary: Review of Trust me by John Updike
Review: The audio casset version of this book is outstanding and is read by the author, which is always a great asset. The short stories are artful character studies that vividly describe the souls of your neighbors, your friends, or yourself in a modern setting. The details are so charming you'll want to listen to it over and over to pick up all the nuances.

Rating:
Summary: Typical Updike
Review: Updike can write splendidly. However, he cannot be compared favorably to even good past or great contemporary authors. In this book Updike is more of the same labored almost beautiful writing. I found Trust Me to be much of the same. For a good short story look elsewhere. However if you are interested in Updike read his earlier books. It seems that as his career lengthened he changed his writing to try and leave a more refined and antiseptic waft in the readers mind, perhaps he had thoughts of stuffy British grandeur.

Rating:
Summary: Trust Updike
Review: What, really, can one say against John Updike? Where, in these stories, can he be faulted? Well, the question need not be so rhetorical. One might, for example, consider the charge that his material is relatively unvarying. Time and again in his short stories Updike returns to the same territory: the white, middle-class couple caught up in the flux of an extra-marital affair. This is the central theme of no less than six of these twenty-two tales, but it touches the edges of many of the others too. And of these others all are confined to the same domestic and social milieu - from 'Killing', in which a daughter must cope with her father's death from Alzheimer's Disease, to 'The City', in which a salesman unexpectedly contracts appendicitis while on a business trip. Where is the broader vision - the black characters, the homosexuals, the political radicals? They are absent from Updike's vision. And yet, if this artist paints on a restricted canvas, it is the detail and style of the brushstrokes that redeems his art. 'Trust Me' is as reliable - as trustworthy - a demonstration as any work in the Updike corpus that the man's linguistic style is extraordinary. Central to it is an astonishing facility for metaphor; no less characteristic is his ear for the musical, his faculty for critical analysis, and a taste for symbolism that is at once unobtrusive and yet deeply satisfying. With such an abundance of stylistic gifts all working simultaneously, the unchanging world of Updike's characters remains fresh and, in 'Trust Me', fresher than ever.