In this sequel to Rabbit, Run, John Updike resumes the spiritual quest of his anxious Everyman, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Ten years have passed; the impulsive former athlete has become a paunchy thirty-six-year-old conservative, and Eisenhower’s becalmed America has become 1969’s lurid turmoil of technology, fantasy, drugs, and violence. Rabbit is abandoned by his family, his home invaded by a runaway and a radical, his past reduced to a ruined inner landscape; still he clings to semblances of decency and responsibility, and yearns to belong and to believe.
Rabbit Redux (Harry Rabbit Angstrom)
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A masterpiece . . . Updike owns a rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit.”—Time
“An awesomely accomplished writer . . . For God’s sake, read the book. It may even—will probably change your life.”—Anatole Broyard
“A superb performance, all grace and dazzle . . . a brilliant portrait of middle America.”—Life
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10 1.5-hour cassettes
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More About the Author
John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 lived in Massachusetts. He was the father of four children and the author of more than fifty books, including collections of short stories, poems, essays, and criticism. His novels won the Pulitzer Prize (twice), the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal. A previous collection of essays, Hugging the Shore, received the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. John Updike died on January 27, 2009, at the age of 76.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
31 of 35 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
When I finished "Rabbit, Run" I was so engrossed in the life of Harry Angstrom I could hardly wait to begin this one. He remains the perfect anti-hero, not very likeable yet someone the reader cannot help pulling for. This book takes up 10 years after the first, and if you are expecting Rabbit to have straightened up and be living a good life, you will be sorely disappointed.
He is living the humdrum existence of a printer, sharing drinks with his dad after work, watching his wife leave and begin an affair with a co-worker, and generally letting life come at him without showing much emotion or spunk. His sister Mim, now a California call girl, quite succinctly tells him, "Everybody else has a life they try to fence in with some rules. You just do what you feel like and then when it blows up or runs down you sit there and pout."
Rabbit loses most everything possible in this book---wife, home, job, lover---but seems complacent as ever and does not noticeably grieve. If fact, he seems quite content to be curled up in his parent's home, eating peanut butter sandwiches, and wearing his old high school letterman's jacket.
The book incorporates the real-life events of the time---the VietNam War, Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon, the racial riots that swept across America---and makes strong political and racial statements. However, this is the part of the book that dragged due to the verbosity of Skeeter, the angry black character who insinuates himself into Rabbit's life. Also present is Jill, an eighteen-year-old hippie who has run away from her wealthy parents and becomes daughter/lover to Rabbit.
As in "Rabbit, Run," a bizarre tragedy occurs three-quarters into the book. Rabbit, however, emerges relatively unscathed and plods along in his everyman's life.
Ruth and Jack Eccles make cameo appearances and there is a more in-depth look at Rabbit's parents, his sister, and Nelson. This is a great character-driven novel as the aimless and almost pathetic Rabbit moves through middle age. With all lost at novel's end, he has nowhere to go but up. Therefore, I am definitely looking forward to the next installment in this tetralogy.
He is living the humdrum existence of a printer, sharing drinks with his dad after work, watching his wife leave and begin an affair with a co-worker, and generally letting life come at him without showing much emotion or spunk. His sister Mim, now a California call girl, quite succinctly tells him, "Everybody else has a life they try to fence in with some rules. You just do what you feel like and then when it blows up or runs down you sit there and pout."
Rabbit loses most everything possible in this book---wife, home, job, lover---but seems complacent as ever and does not noticeably grieve. If fact, he seems quite content to be curled up in his parent's home, eating peanut butter sandwiches, and wearing his old high school letterman's jacket.
The book incorporates the real-life events of the time---the VietNam War, Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon, the racial riots that swept across America---and makes strong political and racial statements. However, this is the part of the book that dragged due to the verbosity of Skeeter, the angry black character who insinuates himself into Rabbit's life. Also present is Jill, an eighteen-year-old hippie who has run away from her wealthy parents and becomes daughter/lover to Rabbit.
As in "Rabbit, Run," a bizarre tragedy occurs three-quarters into the book. Rabbit, however, emerges relatively unscathed and plods along in his everyman's life.
Ruth and Jack Eccles make cameo appearances and there is a more in-depth look at Rabbit's parents, his sister, and Nelson. This is a great character-driven novel as the aimless and almost pathetic Rabbit moves through middle age. With all lost at novel's end, he has nowhere to go but up. Therefore, I am definitely looking forward to the next installment in this tetralogy.
18 of 21 people found the following review helpful
By Todd A. Gray
Format:Paperback
Rabbit Redux is by far the worst of the Rabbit series and for one reason - the character of Skeeter. Never have I read a book where the author allowed such an annoying character to hijack his story. What Jar Jar Binks (that annoying character who never shut up)was to Star Wars-The Phantom Menace, Skeeter was to Redux. After a while of putting up with the boring and endless rantings of this character, I began skipping pages. I hate doing that but I had no choice. I found that it didn't matter much anyway - nothing Skeeter said brought anything to this story, nor does it to the following two Rabbit books
The book was good overall, but why did Updike have to devote so much of the story to Skeeter and his mindless rantings.
The book was good overall, but why did Updike have to devote so much of the story to Skeeter and his mindless rantings.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
By Tom Adair
Format:Paperback
I think Rabbit Redux is a more accomplished book than Rabbit, Run, and a stronger novel. What looked new and experimental in Rabbit, Run (e.g. the present tense narration) seems in this novel more established - less self-conscious and posturing. The cast of characters also comes across as more solid. Rabbit's parents and his son, Nelson, are in particular well-realised - so that one gets a stronger sense here of Rabbit's role within a family than one did in the first novel. (Who, by the way, portrays adolescents as well as Updike?) And Rabbit Redux is also more of a social history than the more literary Rabbit, Run, faithfully reflecting the racial and political climate of 1960s America. I would read Rabbit, Run first, but I would certainly then recommend reading this one.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Literary Twittery
I've started several Updike novels on the strength of his reputation (The Centaur, Bech, Witches of Eastwick), but this is the only one I've gotten through, perhaps because all its... Read more
Published 1 day ago by A Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars
Rabbit
Really weird story and part of a series about the same wired guy. Didn't like it well enough to read any of the other books in the series.
Published 1 month ago by Carole Bean
4.0 out of 5 stars
Worthy Sequel to Rabbit, Run
Rabbit Redux is the sequel to the novel Rabbit, Run written by John Updike, featuring as its protagonist, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Steven M. Anthony
4.0 out of 5 stars
Rabbit Relaxes (or at least the author does)
This is by far the weakest of the Rabbit tetrolgy, but it has its moments, many in fact, Certainly worth reading, even if Updike's ready genius seemed to be taking the night off at... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Great Faulkner's Ghost
5.0 out of 5 stars
Redux redux
I loved this when it first appeared and I have come back to read it again in my sixties. I still admire the quality of Updike's prose but I am struck by the sadness of the plot,... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Setanta
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't waste your time.
This book is so bad. I read the first book in the series and felt compelled to continue on with the story. Read more
Published 8 months ago by K. Rucker
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Work Of Art
I am reading the "Rabbit" series by John Updike. I read all the books years ago; I think when I was in high school, and I don't remember them. Right now I'm on "Rabbit Is Rich". Read more
Published 13 months ago by Charles M. Warady
2.0 out of 5 stars
Rabbit - Overdone
There are a lot of great books out there - many more than can be read in a lifetime. Don't waste your time with Updike's "Rabbit" novels. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Jazzfan
2.0 out of 5 stars
Pointless---which is the point---which makes it worse
Something of a disappointment after Rabbit, Run...even more disgusting, but without any of the redeeming values. It isn't even as well written... Read more
Published 15 months ago by Ash Ryan
5.0 out of 5 stars
Nowhere Man
I have been listening to the Rabbit audiobooks from my library out of sequence, but it's been a fascinating ride. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Volkert Volkersz
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