The New Statesman posted “Books of the Year: NS friends and contributors choose their favorite reading of 2014,” and Leo Robson, a freelance writer who contributes regularly to the NS, Financial Times, and the Times Literary Supplement,  included Updike in his round-up:

“Books of the year tend to be submitted too early to acknowledge November and December releases, so it’s only right to single out a book from late 2013, Nina Stibbe’s hilarious Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life (Penguin, £8.99). The freshest piece of new fiction I read was the 250-page narrative about a gay bookshop that runs through Philip Hensher’s patchwork novel The Emperor Waltz (Fourth Estate, £18.99). A genuine surprise omission from the recent shortlists, it’s Hensher’s third book on the trot – after King of the Badgers and Scenes from Early Life – that hasn’t had its due. I’m eternally grateful to Adam Begley for his diligent and stylish Updike (Harper, £25), which answered a thousand questions.”