The fictional landscape of Cheever's art includes the social pretensions and moral implications of modern suburbia, the larger patterns of human experience, such as the loss of innocence and the deep spiritual hunger for a golden simpler past, and the discovery of beautiful moments to celebrate within the contemporary wasteland. These themes and ideas occur again and again in the short stories and novels. The way they are organized and detailed reveals the form in which Cheever's fictional landscape is created. (p. 115)

[Upon a thin] thread of sensibility, thinner certainly than a sturdy and direct narrative or plot line, are hung the seemingly random episodes of the short stories and novels. Such a method may be overextended in a novel and better suited to the length of the short story, but such is Cheever's method.

The emotional center or vision of Cheever's fiction remains somewhat elusive. His light...