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Book Overview
When we first met him in Rabbit, Run (1960), the book that established John Updike as a major novelist, Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom is playing basketball with some boys in an alley in Pennsylvania during the tail end of the Eisenhower era, reliving for a moment his past as a star high school athlete. Athleticism of a different sort is on display throughout these four magnificent novels--the athleticism of an imagination possessed of the ability to lay bare, with a seemingly effortless animal grace, the enchantments and disenchantments of life. Updike revisited his hero toward the end of each of the following decades in the second half of this American century; and in each of the subsequent novels, as Rabbit, his wife, Janice, his son, Nelson, and the people around them grow, these characters take on the lineaments of our common existence. In prose that is one of the glories of contemporary literature, Updike has chronicled the frustrations and ambiguous triumphs, the longuers, the loves and frenzies, the betrayals and reconciliations of our era. He has given us our representative American story. This Rabbit Angstrom volume is composed of the following novels: Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit is Rich; and Rabbit at Rest.
Customer Reviews
Rated 5 starsTo all you Rabbit Newbies - I'm jealous!
You know how you get hooked on a TV show and can't stand the wait between episodes? You envy the folks who wait for the whole season to come out on DVD and then get to indulge in a viewing orgy. That's how I feel about those of you just getting introduced to Rabbit (Harry Angstrom) and the back to back pleasures that await you. Your reading experience may be fundamentally different from mine though. We meet Rabbit in the...
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Rated 5 starsWriting that constantly amazes
I am new to Updike, just finished the 4 Rabbit novels. I was astonished at the writing in these books. The ability to describe common scenes of ordinary life, the continual observations that ring true and make you nod your head while reading put John Updike above any other author I've read. In my opinion, the best of the Rabbit novels are the first and last. Rabbit Redux was a letdown and the story was not very believable...
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Rated 5 starsNot So Much a Review, More a "Thank You"
I read the first Rabbit book as a student in 1969...in common with many readers I grew up (or at least grew older) along with Harry Angstrom, going through the decades with him in Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich and finally Rabbit at Rest. Like Rabbit I've done my fair share of running, of trying to cope with getting older, families, jobs, expectations and exasperations. In many ways he's not a likeable character, but I've always...
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Rated 5 starsThe "Everyman's Edition" about an Everyman
This is one of those remarkable works that presents itself as the limited tale of one limited person, geographically restricted [in this case (except for one aimless car trip) to small patches of Pennsylvania and Florida], yet utterly universal. Well, universal for men that is; I won't purport to speak for women.What you should know if you don't already: Updike wrote each of the "Rabbit" works as one decade turned to the...
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Rated 5 starsone-line summary???
Nothing comes close in the annals of modern literature to the Rabbit series. This is the book everyone should own. Well, every biting narcisist with no particular views, and with a major messianic complex. So, 99% of the population should own this book. There are SO many levels in this maelstrom of contemporary American culture, subculture, conture-culture, and pop culture. To find out more about the books, read the individual...
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