[Pet Health Admin]

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.
Customer Review: a labor of love...
as a primarily non-fiction reader, i was drawn to the rabbit series by the NYT list of top fiction novels of all time.. I decided to give Mr. Updike a try, and lugged around this behemoth of a series! updike's novels are interesting especially when you consider the historical context of the times in which they were written. for example, his references to sex and overt sexual language were highly controversil at the time of his writing. Reading the series allows you a seat of the passenger train of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, each which their overriding "isms". An enjoyable read.
Customer Review: I did it!
I have to admit it: finishing this 1500 page tome, which consist of the four Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom novels, each longer than the one before it ("Rabbit Run," "Rabbit Redux," "Rabbit is Rich," and "Rabbit at Rest"), gave me a sense of accomplishment. Updike is a truly great writer, but his prose can be ponderous at times, particularly in "Rabbit Run." Some of these characters, including Rabbit himself, can be quite frustrating, especially over the course of four books. Updike's placement as one of the greatest American writers of the last half of the twentieth century, stems from, I believe, his descriptive abilities, whether it be describing the flora in a garden, typical patter on a golf course, sexual scenes, or an angioplasty procedure. The books are spaced ten years apart in time, and Updike does a nice job setting each in the context of its time, although I'm not so sure these novels work as a "time capsule" in that the characters are only peripherally involved in, or concerned with, the seminal events of those eras. Most of the characters don't really change all that much, with the notable exception of Janice, Rabbit's wife, whose character blossoms with each consecutive book. Rabbit, himself, always remains sex and death obsessed, understandably more of the latter as he grows older. He does grow on the reader, though, even after making one poor choice after another. In "Rabbit at Rest," we finally see Rabbit have a relationship based on pure love: that with his grand-daughter Judy. If you're interested, I reviewed each book separately on this web-site, giving "Rabbit Run" three stars, and the other three books four stars. I believe that consolidating all four into a single volume was worthwhile, since there are so many references to past incidents of which which the reader would not be aware, unless s/he has read the prior Rabbit novel(s). Based on the events that are recalled, sometimes it seemed as if Rabbit has spent his life in a cave, only to emerge every ten years for a few months to experience some traumatic event chronicled in the four books that comprise this series. Updike's introduction is very interesting, in that he's surprisingly revealing about his sources and inspiration. He even provides self-critique and analysis, which is quite rare amongst authors of this caliber.


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