Rabbit Redux
by John Updike
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 1175)
Read in December, 2007
So far, this is the harshest book I've read in Updike's Rabbit series. With the characters he's created, it's so hard to say I LIKE them, or relate to them, or understand them, they are all so flawed, so pathetic, so often unredeeming. Yet there is some human connection Updike forces you to make, whether you sympathize with the characters or not. Set in 1969, a controversial time in U.S. history, this book is a challenge in many ways. While scenarios unfold like an over-the-top episode of Jerr...more
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Read in April, 2007
Rabbit Angstrom is not a very sympathetic character - defends the Vietnam war (it's 1971), hits his wife, doesn't go see his mother. But Updike makes him and the other characters in this novel so real that you overlook his flaws and hope he gets out of his predicament, just as you would anyone you knew well. The predicament is that his wife has left him, he's going to be out of a job soon, race riots are taking place a few miles away from the small Pennsylvania city he lives in, and he's gotten ...more
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
people who bought the 2-in-1 edition
12/20: i was wrong. it got good again actually. guilty-pleasure read. but not even SOOOO guilty. light but interesting. the writing...not so hot. i like the first one better in every way i think, but this was a quick read and one i didn't mind reading on the train even after reading crap all day at work.
12/14: it's pretty silly but really has gotten better too.
12/1: frankly i can't tell if i'm bored or not. maybe i should've read a book between this and rabbit, run. or maybe i...more
12/14: it's pretty silly but really has gotten better too.
12/1: frankly i can't tell if i'm bored or not. maybe i should've read a book between this and rabbit, run. or maybe i...more
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Read in April, 1983
This may have been the first book that really made me want to write. I remember discovering it first as a child among my mother's paperbacks---probably 1974 or so. I read it much more thoroughly during my senior year of high school and fell in love with both it and Updike. I think I read every Updike there was within a month. (And even back then there was A LOT). Years later, of course, I can see the imperfections: Jill is a bit of a hippie cliche; some of the historical tie-ins are a little too...more
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Read in January, 2008
A bit more scattered than the first novel (e.g. the story/characters don't seem as tightly wound), as most sequels are. And, in fact, the narrative very accurately mimics both this period in Rabbit's life and the times (60s), which probably makes this a phenomenal achievement by Updike. But, as a reader, I found it a bit harder to get through than the first book and felt more distracted. Still, I love how Updike creates characters that are so real, in the sense that I still don't know if I adm...more
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
people who HAVE to read things through in order
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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Ten years later. Harry is 36 now, a depressed and apathetic lower-middle-class working stiff in Middle America who has to make sense of the Vietnam war, civil rights movement, hippies, sex, drugs, etc. The Harry character is still not very likeable. He loses his wife, his house, his job, his teenage hippie runaway lover, and he’s still not shocked out of his ennui, but there are a few sparkles of passion in him that show. I thought the neurotic, prophetic, and rambling character of Skeeter was...more
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Read in December, 2007
recommends it for:
people who love harsh reality
I devoured Rabbit Redux even more than the first book and I can't wait for the third. Sure the tone of the story is very depressing and some of the plot twists are insane, but Updike's insights into humanity made me laugh out loud and literally slap my knee several times. Most of all, Updike's poetic descriptions leave me pleasantly dizzy. And I've never read better descriptions of sex (like the real motivations for different encounters and the depression that often follows the momentary exh...more
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Read in September, 2006
A pretty big disappointment. The first quarter of the book is great -- about how Rabbit's wife runs off with another man and his lack of dealing with it -- but after that the plot stalls. If it wasn't for the fact that the last two books won the pulitzer, I think I would've stopped at this. the only upside is I'm currently reading the 3rd book -- which is wonderful -- and that experience is so much richer having read this book. But all in all, I'd say skip this one and move on to the 3rd boo...more
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Read in January, 1997
This novel reads more like a collection of essays about hippies and the Black movement of the 70's in dialogue format. It makes no sense that Rabbit would be hanging out with the young naive idealistic white girl and her druggie civil rights spouting black male friend. None of the book makes any sense as a story. However, it is Updike doing his usual thing of combining together pivotal or extreme concepts or characterizations of a decade or era to make a statement about the times.
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Read in April, 2001
Wherein the Rabbit series momentarily flies off the rails. This could only have been written when it was, but rather than coming across as dated, it reads like a raw snapshot of the late '60s, as filtered through a middle-class white guy who doesn't understand it at all (I'm referring here to Rabbit). Redux also plants much of the neurosis that will plague young Nelson Angstrom for decades to come.
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Read in April, 2007
recommends it for:
those interested in the aesthetics of wifeswapping and race-bating
"Everything is blank until you fuck it."
J. Updike.
He's still the purtiest writer we've got when he wants to be, but sometimes this gets mired in absurd bouts of vulgarity. There's a whole lot of "cunt" in this book. Not that I've got anything against "cunt." It's just, his talents lie elsewhere. Overall, very wise, eminently readable, and almost great.
J. Updike.
He's still the purtiest writer we've got when he wants to be, but sometimes this gets mired in absurd bouts of vulgarity. There's a whole lot of "cunt" in this book. Not that I've got anything against "cunt." It's just, his talents lie elsewhere. Overall, very wise, eminently readable, and almost great.
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recommends it for:
mature readers
The second in the series, shit gets crazy in this book. Lots and lots of sex and drugs, with themes similar to the first book. This book additionally handles issues in America in the 60s and 70s. Updike introduces two of what I think are the most interesting characters in the series: a teenage hippy-girl and a prideful, angry, black drug-dealer prophet.
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I read this as part of a course on religion. It was only listed as a religion course because the prof. didn't have English department credentials and really wanted to teach the books. I'm not sure why he was so enamored with the books. Rabbit is such a flawed, boring caricature of a person. Well, all of the characters are like that. Blah.
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I've read Rabbit, Run and tried to read Rabbit is Rich and I think this is the best book of the series. Skeeter is great character, although a bit stereotypical of his time period. It accurately reflects the dilemma of the white american male of that era. Harry is torn between the ideals of the his father's generation and of his son's.
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Read in April, 2002
This book follows Rabbit, Run. (It's the second in Updike's Rabbit series.) Matt likes this one more than Rabbit, Run, but to me there was no comparison. Some of the monologues went on a bit long in this one, and it was a little too heavy-handed and preachy for my taste. Eh. I still like Updike, but this wasn't his best.
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Updike's prose is uniquely his own. It flowers quite naturally from the lips of his characters and spreads around them like beautiful creeping ivy. Though sometimes it sprouts didactic pronouncements on the part of the narrator, it's all so scintillating and earnest that you can't help but forgive him. The bastard.
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Although there is (as there always is in Updike's novels) some beautiful language in this novel, there is too much of the other, the awful, the unreadable. When he tries to give voice to his african-american characters, he turns his novel into an old-timey minstrel show. It is <gack> hard to swallow.
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Read in November, 2007
I decided to read all of the Rabbit books after hearing a podcast in which Richard Ford's trilogy was compared to Updike's series. While I would say that I prefer Ford, I must admit that I liked them. Given my rather negative impression of most of Updike's essays, I was pleasantly surprised.
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Read in November, 2007
I was very disappointed by this follow-up to Rabbit, Run. The characters of Jill and Skeeter rang false to me and unfortunately took up a lot of real estate in the novel. I may hate all of the other characters, but they were at least real to me.
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