Rating: 
Summary: A Perfect Strike Every Time...Suburban NY Time Capsule...
Review: ...Not to mention the Big City itself.My favorite (I don't even remember the story name) is the one about the child in the ski resort, simply unforgettable. With over 50 polished diamonds, sometimes the names can be hard to remember..but not the stories themselves. Some I have not noticed mentioned here are CITY OF BROKEN dreams, about a naive couple given the "run-around" by some unpleasant vultures in the Big Town.THE MUSIC TEACHER,probably the darkest one here.THE LOWBOY,a tale of interfamily greed.As Mr. Cheever writes in the preface:"Stories of a long-lost world when the city of NY was filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationary store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.Here's the last of that generation....who truly were nostalgic for love and happiness,and whose gods were as ancient as your and mine, whoever you are"..It seems a long vanished world indeed...BTW, another author of the period who may be one of Mr. Cheever's few peers, with fine stories too, is Irwin Shaw, a must for those who have read all of Mr. Cheever, and yearn for more!
Rating:
Summary: The laureate of Shady Hill
Review: Born in 1912, John Cheever gives a unique survey of the bright American mid-century through his stories. Like his literary brother, John Updike, having a life both lucky and lusty hardly spoilt his acuity.Cheever made his name as the laureate of Shady Hill, a pleasant post-war borough of bliss and torment, just a train ride beyond Manhattan. Many of these stories were initially penned for the New Yorker magazine. In the original 1979 introduction to this omnibus, he gently mocks its "dated paraphernalia". The stories still soar beyond their time, through a faultless touch for manners and mores. For Cheever's natural field of study is "decorum" as he puts it. This he studies with great artifice but never drily. Once imagined, savoured and named, "The Enormous Radio" could only have been his. This monstrous gift mysteriously pipes the loves and quarrels of surrounding families into the apartment of a "satisfactorily average" couple. Surreal snatches of Edward Lear bedtime reading are siphoned in. The couple lose their usual protective static and face again their own wickedness. From this early classic, Cheever went on to love and lampoon the Shady Hill domain, its interlocking characters playing out their dramas on Alewives Lane. There, a man may luckily recoup venial and mortal sins, but equally may forfeit everything on a pratfall. Life's fateful turns are observed with a fine mixture of acid and sympathy. The accomplished grandmother of "An Educated American Woman" cables her accomplished daughter, in perfect Italian, that she cannot make it back from Italy for her grandson's death. Cheever's striking use of the rhythms and progressions of fairytale is a bonus. In "The Children", the hapless servant Victor stumbles like a lost medieval courtier to ever-declining situations. "The Swimmer's" suburban pool-crawl starts as an alcoholic dare and ends in witchy desolation. One hand guarding the meal ticket from his comfortable readership, Cheever managed brave sleight of hand with the other. Rarely does he descend into Saturday Evening Post mawkishness. The 60 stories amassed from five previous collections give a satisfying sense of a skill husbanded and used over a long period, just about as well as we can ask of a writer. Cheever responded to the continuous assessment demands of his craft as did few writers in the class of the 20th century short story. [The West Australian, Saturday February 23 1991]
Rating:
Summary: The laureate of Shady Hill
Review: Born in 1912, John Cheever gives a unique survey of the bright American mid-century through his stories. Like his literary brother, John Updike, having a life both lucky and lusty hardly spoilt his acuity. Cheever made his name as the laureate of Shady Hill, a pleasant post-war borough of bliss and torment, just a train ride beyond Manhattan. Many of these stories were initially penned for the New Yorker magazine. In the original 1979 introduction to this omnibus, he gently mocks its "dated paraphernalia". The stories still soar beyond their time, through a faultless touch for manners and mores. For Cheever's natural field of study is "decorum" as he puts it. This he studies with great artifice but never drily. Once imagined, savoured and named, "The Enormous Radio" could only have been his. This monstrous gift mysteriously pipes the loves and quarrels of surrounding families into the apartment of a "satisfactorily average" couple. Surreal snatches of Edward Lear bedtime reading are siphoned in. The couple lose their usual protective static and face again their own wickedness. From this early classic, Cheever went on to love and lampoon the Shady Hill domain, its interlocking characters playing out their dramas on Alewives Lane. There, a man may luckily recoup venial and mortal sins, but equally may forfeit everything on a pratfall. Life's fateful turns are observed with a fine mixture of acid and sympathy. The accomplished grandmother of "An Educated American Woman" cables her accomplished daughter, in perfect Italian, that she cannot make it back from Italy for her grandson's death. Cheever's striking use of the rhythms and progressions of fairytale is a bonus. In "The Children", the hapless servant Victor stumbles like a lost medieval courtier to ever-declining situations. "The Swimmer's" suburban pool-crawl starts as an alcoholic dare and ends in witchy desolation. One hand guarding the meal ticket from his comfortable readership, Cheever managed brave sleight of hand with the other. Rarely does he descend into Saturday Evening Post mawkishness. The 60 stories amassed from five previous collections give a satisfying sense of a skill husbanded and used over a long period, just about as well as we can ask of a writer. Cheever responded to the continuous assessment demands of his craft as did few writers in the class of the 20th century short story. [The West Australian, Saturday February 23 1991]
Rating:
Summary: Automatic Cannonization
Review: Cheever must stand as one of the great short story writers in American literary history. These stories offer insight into the minds of different types of characters -- alcoholics, businessmen, wives, lovers and up-and-comers. Yes, Cheever presents a mural which, when taken in at once, is both cathartic and glorious -- a testament to his own imagination and to the spririt of America which he so eloquently and masterfully transcribes into a modern classic. If any stories must be read, I recommend "Farewell, My Brother," and "The Swimmer." Both conjure up the feelings which we so often experience in our own lives, and which Cheever describes so beautifully. This collection joins the cannon of world literature as a work which can be read and re-read throughout the years.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-crafted, lovely language... But no teeth
Review: Ever hear mountains of praise heaped on something and then, when you check it out yourself, mutter, "But there isn't any there there!" I don't want to say this emperor has no clothes. These stories are not all the same. Some of the best are about average people trying to make ends meet in the big city--a classic theme that has lately been neglected. But too many fit the old "New Yorker" formula perfectly: Careful sketch of an affluent northeastern WASP family, conflict over adultery (or the risk of it), over money, or over some old sibling conflict, leading to a magnificently written two-sentence epiphany that has very little dramatic punch. I guess I find Cheever's stories to be beautifully crafted but emotionally distant. For similar subject matter handled with much more compassion (and passion), I recommend Updike's stories.
Rating:
Summary: John Cheever was a national treasure.
Review: He is simply the best short story writer of his time.
Rating: 
Summary: John Cheever stinks!
Review: I agree with Stink-0! I don't see why anyone would even want to read John Cheever's stories let alone enjoy them. All they describe is the insane problems of people you wouldn't want to hang around with anyway. I give him two thumbs down
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful and true
Review: I am scared to review this book because I know nothing I can say will do justice to it. I will try to begin by saying that here Cheever sheds a brilliant light on the men and women of his time. The suburban WASPs of the 1950's, characters I knew only as the smug, stiff-necked bourgeois of pop history, are rendered here in flesh and blood and love and fear and nostalgia and a love of beauty. In Cheever's own words, "their gods are as ancient as yours or mine, whoever you may be." The result is some of the most beautiful, tenderest and most enlightening stories of any age. Let me stop here. Just read it.
Rating:
Summary: It has a cummulative effect
Review: I bought a used copy of this book and on the cover there is an upper middle class couple having drinks around a dining table in the drained swimming pool in their backyard. At first I didn't think much of it, but after reading the stories, I think it makes so much sense. There is always something slightly off about Cheever's stories, but it's hard to put your finger on what that is. It took me a little while to get into these stories, but after a while I came to love them. By the end of the book, the ending of the story, Another Story, knocked me breathless. The best ending to a short story I've ever read. I have also see how influential Cheever was on contemporary American short story writers, at least Tobias Wolff, Mary Robison and I think Lorrie Moore as well. This is the sort of book you want to savor , a couple stories a day. Cheever is a master of subtly shifting the mood of a piece. Out of the blue you'll suddenly realize you're in a different place from where you started.
Rating:
Summary: Timeless
Review: I bought this book in the early 80's when it came out in paperback. I have read maybe the first 10 or 11 stories, mostly when I am between books. You have to savor each, one at a time. Your mind will accumulate all sorts of thoughts and ideas in the days after you read each story. Cheever had a very special view on people and life.
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