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Title: Rabbit at Rest by John Updike ISBN: 0-449-91194-2 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 27 August, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.32 (28 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: R.I.P. Rabbit
Comment: The last novel in John Updike's famous tetralogy finds that life is finally winding down for Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, as America heads into 1989 with a new President and an ever-evolving set of cultural icons and reference points. After three decades of making mistakes -- both personal and professional -- and working like a dog, Harry is ready for retirement from his position as sales manager of the Toyota dealership his wife Janice inherited from her parents, and he and Janice are dividing their time between their native Brewer, Pennsylvania, and their new condo in Florida.
Now fifty-five, Harry is besieged by the deleterious effects of aging and careless eating. Despite his concern for the burning pains in his chest and his excessive weight, he can't stop snacking on junk food, and the consequences are nasty: He has a mild heart attack while taking his granddaughter Judy sailing and, even after having an angioplasty, defies his doctor's advice to change his diet. The man has never been able to control his insatiability, and we, the readers, wait patiently for the crash and burn.
However, it is Harry's son Nelson who is going through the worst travails. Having been left in charge of the car dealership and, like his father, never one for self-discipline, he has developed a cocaine habit which he finances partly by siphoning profits from the business and which makes him a danger to his wife Pru and their two children not to mention the entire Angstrom family fortune. It is typical of Harry's impudence that his extramarital sexual activity, a subject of every Rabbit novel, this time extends to his daughter-in-law, while Nelson is trying to clean himself up at a treatment center.
Updike has always fashioned Harry and Janice as a married representation of all the combined good and bad of the national ethic, a sort of warped suburban American Gothic. At the end of the decade in which AIDS entered the public conscience and S & L scandals wracked the economy, there is something wistful about Harry's participation in a Fourth of July parade dressed as Uncle Sam, a symbol of post-Reagan America -- proud, overbearing, bloated, dying.
Harry as a character hasn't changed much since "Rabbit is Rich," but his immutability is part of his appeal. His peculiar thoughts on the practical aspects of mundane things -- a tour guide's chirpy attitude, the sexual implications of a waitress's hairstyle, the idiosyncrasies of television news anchors -- are always illuminating. The novel is a vehicle for Updike's flowing commentary, delivered in his inimitably witty prose, on pop culture as it existed in 1989, which is still recent enough for the memories to flicker in all their pastel-highlighted tackiness.
Rating: 5
Summary: A satisfying final installment of the Rabbit books
Comment: This book is the final volume in the four-novel saga of Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom, so you know it is going to tie up some loose ends, and it does, some neatly and some not-so-neatly. As a novel, it has the same high-quality writing as the other three, a credit to Updike's ability to maintain his creative energy over the years. As the final installment of the Rabbit cycle, it fits well into the overall story. Rabbit in his mid-fifties still struggles with the same character flaws he had as a young man, but he has also mellowed with age, making him if not more likeable at least more sympathetic. He does a lot of reflecting on the course of his life, and you get to understand how he feels about some to the things he did in previous novels, how he feels about his wife, children, and grandchildren, about living in Mt. Judge/Brewer all his life. This novel rounds out his character. He finally stops being so driven and is able to stand and absorb the good and the bad in his life. I absolutely recommend this book to those who have read any of the other Rabbit books. It also works as a stand-alone novel, but I think the story is so much richer in the context of the previous books.
Rating: 3
Summary: There's Always Something: The Angstrom Saga Continues
Comment: This is the final book in John Updike's Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom tetralogy. It is a good book with much to recommend, particularly the author's interesting fleshing-out of the character of Pru, Harry's daughter-in-law, but the Rabbit saga has clearly run out of steam. Besides spending much time rehashing the events of the earlier three books, the author also tries too hard to cram in all of the current events of the late 1980's as a method of juxtaposing them with those of Harry's personal life.
Rabbit, now in his mid-fifties, is enduring a heart condition and the shennanigans of his troubled and irresponsible son, Nelson, who has assumed the management of his late grandfather's automobile dealership. This book concerns the losses one suffers in late middle age: the loss of youth, vigor and health, and with retirement, the loss of one's career together with the sense of usefulness to one's family and to one's self. All these factors trigger a quantum drop in poor Harry's self-esteem.
All that is left to Harry Angstrom now are his memories: his childhood home, the good times with his younger sister Mim, and especially the fame he had as a high school basketball jock. In various parts of the book Rabbit is shown reading a book on American history his wife Janice had given to him as a present. It is apt that Harry Angstrom, now a creature of the American past, should spend some of his spare time reading about it. The history of the American man is about the adventures of past heroes or near-heroes, like Harry Angstrom. Rabbit also is seen listening to the news on his car radio or discussing with others the current events of the day. This is the world that has sadly passed Rabbit by.
Rabbit, who has largely ignored his doctor's advice to follow a more healthful diet and to exercise more, attempts to redeem himself and to recapture some of his colorful past by shooting baskets with some street kids. The history of Harry Angstrom has now come full circle from the young Harry Angstrom of _Rabbit, Run._ Sometimes one fails to realize that he simply cannot go home again.
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Title: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike ISBN: 0449911829 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Rabbit Redux by John Updike ISBN: 0449911934 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Rabbit, Run by John Updike ISBN: 0449911659 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: August, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories by Robert Olen Butler ISBN: 0802137989 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: 10 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields ISBN: 014023313X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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