Because the narration of Toward the End of Time is in the first-person, and because Ben is a mercurial character, all of the other characters are necessarily projections of Ben's conception of them. This is a source of both frustration and opportunity for readers. On the one hand, Ben's version of reality is sometimes frustrating since it is limiting; on the other, we are constantly aware of the need to pay attention and read with a critical eye. Updike mastered this approach in short stories like "A & P," "The Lifeguard," and "The Music School," and here, more than in any of his previous novels, Updike emphasizes the unreliability of his narrator. At the same time, he reminds us that this is our only source of information or truth. The novel is Updike's closest approximation of the "metafiction" that writers such as Robert Coover, William H. Gass, and occasionally...