The World of Apples

During a writing career which spanned forty years, John Cheever
won a National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book
Critics Circle Award and an American Book Award. John Cheever
among his eleven books was perhaps best known for his short
stories dealing with upper middle class suburban life.
In The World of Apples, John Cheever's characters -innocent,
old-fashioned, self-aware - are summoned by strange and
improbable events to ponder the values they have been taught to
trust…decency, common sense, nostalgia, even truth. Stunned
by these encounters, they nevertheless survive.
A worn-out poet finds peace in his heart as he lays his Lermontov
medal at the foot of the sacred angel; a prosperous suburbanite
contemplates his predicament when his wife joins the cast of a
nude show; a guileless and romantic well digger, anxious for a
bride, visits Russia, falls in love and returns home "singing the
unreality blues"; and a miserably married man fantasizes a
beautiful lover who comes to him for strength, love and counsel
while he tends the charcoal grill in the backyard.