Though each protagonist has a different name, the circumstances come from [John Updike]'s own life, as any reader familiar with the author's 1989 memoir, Self-Consciousness, will recognize.

The final two sentences seem especially poignant: "My lifelong pills cupped in my left hand, I lift the glass, its water sweetened by its brief wait on the marble sink-top. If I can read this strange old guy's mind aright, he's drinking a toast to the visible world, his impending disappearance from it be damned."

The American publisher, Knopf, is one of the more meticulous when it comes to the niceties of book production, and bibliophiles -- and Updike fans -- will be delighted that My Father's Tears and Other Stories is designed to match all previous Updike books, right down to the Janson typeface used for the text.