In this sequel to Rabbit, Run, John Updike resumes the spiritual quest of his anxious Everyman, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Ten ... read full description
reviews
Apr 14, 2010
This is actually cut and pasted from a long comment on someone else's review! It focuses primarily on this book, altho there are some sentiments in it I'd apply to all the Rabbit stories.
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warning! terribly tl;dr
Ben said:
Updike swung for the fences; he wanted to represent the 60s in one novel; but it was like he didn’t really immerse himself in it; like he was trying to write about it from the outside, as an observer. Novels written by the “observer wri More...
***
warning! terribly tl;dr
Ben said:
Updike swung for the fences; he wanted to represent the 60s in one novel; but it was like he didn’t really immerse himself in it; like he was trying to write about it from the outside, as an observer. Novels written by the “observer wri More...
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Jan 18, 2009
Greg
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I wrote this review a few years ago for a different site. I called it Rabbit's A Reactionary Racist. It's been edited a little bit from it's original context.
What is the novel about? Well it’s about Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom: a man in his early thirties, with a wife, a son and a job on the verge of being made obsolete by technology. In the first novel, Rabbit ran away from his wife and young child. The novel dealt with the way he is pulled between his freedom and responsibility. In More...
What is the novel about? Well it’s about Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom: a man in his early thirties, with a wife, a son and a job on the verge of being made obsolete by technology. In the first novel, Rabbit ran away from his wife and young child. The novel dealt with the way he is pulled between his freedom and responsibility. In More...
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Jul 14, 2009
Katherine
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As Rabbit Redux begins in 1968, we learn that our man-child anti-hero has grown up into... one of those crew-cut wing-tipped lawn-mowing wife-slapping N-bomb-dropping don't-sass-me-punk-I-did-my-time-in-that-Korean-thing weasels that populate every single white suburban boy's 1960s coming of age story ever written, the ones who serve as a foul-mouthed foil for the young hero's eventual enlightenment.
In my review of Rabbit Run I touched on the divide between the "clean" Brew More...
In my review of Rabbit Run I touched on the divide between the "clean" Brew More...
Aug 06, 2007
Liz
rated it:
Ugh. I'm committed to reading these through, but this had better be the low point of the series (ahem, tetralogy). Updike is compelled to use the word "cunt" as often as possible, and the Skeeter character is boring and obnoxious. The third section dragged (all those quotes from "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas"?!) and there wasn't enough of Updike actually writing the beautiful descriptions of landscape and feeling that he's capable of.
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Apr 09, 2009
Frank
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
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Apr 14, 2010
Ben
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A year ago I vowed to myself (and you, if you had read my review of Rabbit, Run) that I’d read a Rabbit novel annually until I’m done with the four-novel series; the idea being that I could look back and see how I’d changed in the past year, comparing the changes in my life with those incurred by Rabbit. But it’s the same shit different day for me over here, ya hear? And I’m not turning this into some kind of self centered review about me-me-me. Instead, I’m going to (eventually) talk about t
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Jan 04, 2009
Noah
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This is the second novel in the Rabbit tetraology, written in 1971. John Updike is without a doubt one of the best novelists of the past 50 years. Some authors like Updike and Philip Roth write with such ease it is obvious when you read their prose.
Ten years after the first Rabbit novel, this book is about many things - marital infedilty and the challenges of middle-age, the 1960s, Vietnam and of course the furher development of Harry Angstrom, an anti-hero whose best times seem to b More...
Ten years after the first Rabbit novel, this book is about many things - marital infedilty and the challenges of middle-age, the 1960s, Vietnam and of course the furher development of Harry Angstrom, an anti-hero whose best times seem to b More...
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Dec 10, 2011
P.Sannie
rated it:
The story of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom continues in Rabbit Redux and at the end of Rabbit Run, I thought, "Hmm, what's going to happen now?" The second part has a lot of different themes: the Vietnam War, segregation, infidelity, family, how complex relationships can be. Updike's writing is marvelous and captures the humanity of every character. I liked and disliked all of the characters and they come across as very real. All of them are flawed and you can't fault them for
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Sep 25, 2011
Sergio
rated it:
Also listened to Arthur Morrey's audiobook version. Performed as well as the last one, this book is just as frustrating: Rabbit is as annoying as ever, full of self-pity and inertia, left by his wife, and a few dozen pounds overweight. This book, I guess, could be considered an overly explicit "political" novel. Explicit in that it jumps into each of the controversial topics of the times (70s), without any sort of subtlety: from race relations, to Vietnam, to free love. It can get a li
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Jul 21, 2011
Patrick
rated it:
There are some wonderful sentences in this book - the opening line "men emerge from the little printing plant at four sharp, ghosts for an instant, blinking until the outdoor light overcomes the look of constant indoor light clinging to them" is amongst my favourites. Over a whole novel, though I start to find it a bit tiresome and over-written.
For me, its of interest mainly as a document of changing times and the upheavals of the 1960s as seen from the point of view of an More...
For me, its of interest mainly as a document of changing times and the upheavals of the 1960s as seen from the point of view of an More...
Feb 19, 2011
Holly
rated it:
New York Times
Review by ANATOLE BROYARD
Published: November 5, 1971
RABBIT REDUX
By John Updike
When I began this book and found Rabbit Angstrom 10 years older, fatter, softer, settled and no longer even running as he was in the earlier version, I wondered why Updike had locked himself in with this loser, why he had given himself so little elbow room. He has this habit, I thought, of keeping his people small -- old, precious or ordinary -- so he can write all More...
Review by ANATOLE BROYARD
Published: November 5, 1971
RABBIT REDUX
By John Updike
When I began this book and found Rabbit Angstrom 10 years older, fatter, softer, settled and no longer even running as he was in the earlier version, I wondered why Updike had locked himself in with this loser, why he had given himself so little elbow room. He has this habit, I thought, of keeping his people small -- old, precious or ordinary -- so he can write all More...
Dec 21, 2010
Brittney
rated it:
While Rabbit Run was essentially the starter Updike book in this class examining Updike's career, Rabbit, Redux was the graduated version. More freestyle than Rabbit Run since Updike had built up his fame in the interim between books and was on his own personal quest to be bigger than Shakespeare (a personal motive brought about by Updike's rise in career even after a reviewer compared him to Shakespeare).
In this novel, Janice and Nelson have bigger roles. It isn't about Rabbit, and this ti
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Nov 29, 2010
Ian
rated it:
Difficult book this. Maybe its just me, but I just dont tend to get American Authors doing the great american novel thing that well.
10 years on from the Rabbit Run, Harry is back with Janice, has a 12 year old boy nelson and is living the american dream - job, house, beers after work.
All of this collapses, as you would expect.
The author also tries to pack the sixties into the novel - at times, we have free love, 60s aggitation against the man, black power, th More...
10 years on from the Rabbit Run, Harry is back with Janice, has a 12 year old boy nelson and is living the american dream - job, house, beers after work.
All of this collapses, as you would expect.
The author also tries to pack the sixties into the novel - at times, we have free love, 60s aggitation against the man, black power, th More...
Aug 19, 2010
Jee
rated it:
My first Updike, and I exploded with pure pleasure. From the precise beauty of its descriptions. From its beguiling historical detail and allegorical meaning. From its nuanced understanding of men and women, particularly men, but also women, what they want, what they fear, what they fear to want.
The structure of the book is elegantly simple. It opens with a wife walking out on her husband, and closes with the probability of them getting back together again. Harry "Rabbit" More...
The structure of the book is elegantly simple. It opens with a wife walking out on her husband, and closes with the probability of them getting back together again. Harry "Rabbit" More...
Apr 20, 2010
Mbmar
rated it:
Really 3.5 or maybe 4. This is undoubtedly an important book in the world of publishing, but I felt Rabbit, Run (despite how disturbing I found the ending) was much better written. Perhaps this was one was more disturbing, but in a different way. Where Rabbit was just plain immature in the first book. Here he's just plain spineless. I had a hard time believing how much he loved his mother in the end of the book - where did THAT come from???? To me he was mixing love with pity. But then, Rabbit i
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Jul 01, 2009
Hollis
rated it:
Updike is often mentioned as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century and the Rabbit books are described as masterpieces of American literature. Am I missing something? As far as I could tell, it was a soap-opera plot mixed in with some tasteless sex scenes, an excessive amount of detail and descriptive language that is so excessively ornate it frequently becomes tawdry and nonsensical. That seems to impress the critics, but it doesn't impress me.
This book is also an o More...
This book is also an o More...
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Apr 14, 2009
Geetha
rated it:
This is the second in the series of Rabbit books by John Updike. At the start of the book, Rabbit seems to have settled down to a more conventional life, he is living with his wife and son, owns a house, and has a job. His excessive interest in sex in “Rabbit Run” has quietened, he is an active father, does housework – (it is Janice who is running around in “Redux” ) but as the book progresses Rabbit’s life unravels. You see the same inability in Rabbit to take hold of things, to cope and organi
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Sep 02, 2011
Richard
rated it:
Ten years have passed in the life of the book's protagonist, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, since we met him in the first novel to chronicle his life, "Rabbit Run." Ten years had also passed in the life of the author, and in the life of the United States, in real time, between novels. Rabbit is now about thirty-six years old, and he is settled into a new modest rancher in the burbs of Reading, er, Brewer. He and wife Janice and now-thirteen year old son Nelson are a nuclear family.
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Nov 03, 2011
Newton
rated it:
This is the second book of John Updike's Rabbit Series; it seems to generally be the least talked about of the collection, and I can see why. The first issue I had is it is dated. It still holds some interest as a sort of time capsule of the late-60's, but I did not connect with much of it on a personal level. It does not help that I found little sympathy for any of the characters, including Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, with whom I so strongly identified in the first book (Rabbit, Run).
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Aug 12, 2011
Fabian
rated it:
Like the decade of the ’60s, “Rabbit Redux” is a bit tricky. Wee complications arise in so liberal a landscape, especially if the everyman in the novel is absurdly conservative. Add then a haze proliferated by drugs (weed and alcohol and pills) in the mix, and what you have left over is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, older but none the wiser. This time around, ten years after the first Rabbit novel, Janice, Harry’s sad, insipid wife runs away, leaving Rabbit with the kid. Add then too the elements tha
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Jun 28, 2011
Jogle
rated it:
In the second instalment of the Rabbit series, Harry Angstrom is ten years older, America is about to win the race to the moon and Vietnam is showing all the signs of being a disastrous miscalculation. The sexual revolution of the sixties has taken place and Rabbit is settled into married life with a teenage son . . . but Rabbit is never really settled. Any reader would need to read the first in this series to understand the undertows that are pulling at Rabbit. I didn’t enjoy this a much as the
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May 21, 2010
Angela
rated it:
Rabbit and Janice's marriage has fallen into a familiar pattern. They split up for a while, kill somebody, and then get back together without resolving any of the issues that drove them apart. Whatever lifts their luggage, I suppose, although I could have done without the third of the book in which Rabbit explores his cuckolding 3-way fetishes with his beafroed black power intellectual houseguest while reading Frederick Douglass passages. This part of the narrative occupied most of the drive thr
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Apr 20, 2009
Gregg
rated it:
Not quite as satisfying as "Rabbit, Run." Too sexually graphic for even my taste. The politics wandered aimlessly, and the characters were way too broad, or even cliched, for any kind of empathy on my part. Yet I kept reading it. So Updike must know something I don't about the meaning of Midwestern life.
Rabbit Angstrom's adventures pick up after the first novel: he's back with his wife, but they separate. He's about to lose his job. He shacks up with a hippie girl of sort More...
Rabbit Angstrom's adventures pick up after the first novel: he's back with his wife, but they separate. He's about to lose his job. He shacks up with a hippie girl of sort More...
Aug 19, 2009
Rick
rated it: 
At the end of Rabbit Redux is a wonderfully affecting reconcilation between two life- and self- battered lovers that is beautifully observed and true to life at its most poignant. Clear proof that Updike is not just a master stylist but a gifted observor and chronicler of life’s disappointments and consolations. Before that, however, is a manic-depressive narrative of less than credible events and choices linked to the emblematic turmoil of the 60s in ways that leave the reader disconnected from
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Feb 25, 2011
Mike
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Rabbit Angstrom isn't running anymore. After his wife Janice leaves him to move in with Charlie Stavros, a car salesman at her father's car lot, Rabbit is adrift. He and his son, Nelson, now thirteen, are going it alone at their home in the burbs. Enter Jill, a rich runaway from Connecticut complete with Porsche. Rabbit is alone no more. In fact, when Stavros tells Rabbit he's growing tired of Janice, Rabbit's not ready for Janice to come home. Rabbit stands his ground. And he takes chanc
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Sep 02, 2009
Jeff
rated it:
When i was in my mid-20s (closer to 30, though), i read Rabbit Run and felt like Updike really understood me. Now that i'm 40, i figured it was time to read Updike's novel about Rabbit Angstom in his mid-30s.
I have a hard time writing anything about either of these two Updike books, the only ones i've ever read, because his style is so non-stylish. Well, 350+ pages and i barely made a note in the margins and i never underlined-and-exclamation-pointed a single sentence. That tells me More...
I have a hard time writing anything about either of these two Updike books, the only ones i've ever read, because his style is so non-stylish. Well, 350+ pages and i barely made a note in the margins and i never underlined-and-exclamation-pointed a single sentence. That tells me More...
Dec 25, 2011
Mason
rated it:
If you disliked Rabbit, Run, you’ll loathe this—it’s got twice the violence, twice the sex, and about ten times the tragedy. But, if you cottoned to the first installment of Harry’s story—if you sensed the motions of celebratory grace in its descent into suburban mania—you’ll fall even more deeply in love with this follow-up. At the heart of the novel is an ingenious switcharoo—this time, Janice goes off in search of her self, while Harry is burdened with domestic responsibility. Where they go a
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May 29, 2011
Jennifer
rated it:
I love the way John Updike writes. The way he describes a story is like looking at a huge Impressionistic painting. Jumbles and blots of color are all mixed up and never look the same when read again. His sentences blend together in such a stream of consciousness that it gives you a sense that you really are floating in Harry Angstrom’s mind as he plods along through the weird 60’s trying to make sense of a changing world (men on the moon, boys in Vietnam, Kubrick, Kennedys, racism and riots)
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