** spoiler alert ** It is 1979 in Brewer, Pennsylvania and in some ways things are looking up for Rabbit Angstrom. In other ways, though, he is still the same ol’ Rabbit, just much more distant from his glory day as a high school basketball star. In this novel, Rabbit is middle-aged and comfortable, at least financially operating his late father-in-law’s Toyota dealership and dabbling in gold and silver speculation. He has also mellowed a bit and is not the angry man that we saw in both “Rabbit, Run” and “Rabbit Redux.” Heck, he even spends most of his days at the country club with various friends, trying to perfect his golf game and drinking gin.

On the other hand, Rabbit is still quite discontented. His son Nelson is dropping out of college and appears to have impregnated an administrative support person at Kent State and will soon have to marry her. He and his son argue about many of the same things that a son and a middle-aged father might argue about, God, commitment, and Nelson’s future at the Toyota dealership. Janice is in many ways his rock, but she is still a bit flawed and a she likes to take more than the occasional drink a little more often than she should. Rabbit also has the lingering suspicion that father a child with his one-time lover Ruth Leonard and that she may have dropped into the Toyota dealership looking for a deal on a new vehicle to beat back the ever expanding gas prices. Rabbit also is discontented because of his libido. At approximately forty-six, he wonders whether he will get to enjoy the amount and variety of women he would like to, especially his friend’s young wife, the alluring and shapely Cindy. Some of his needs are satiated - sexually he and his friends have a nice swinger weekend on a Caribbean holiday (although he doesn’t get the woman of his choice) and he and his wife move in to a bigger house in a nicer neighborhood, but things are still somewhat incomplete. At one point he confronts his old lover Ruth Leonard, and she sums up Rabbit nicely as all “me, me and gimme, gimme” - hard to argue with that characterization.

I have written before about the depth of the characters that Updike has created in this series and while that continues in this volume, what struck me the most in “Rabbit is Rich” is the manner in which Brewer, Pennsylvania and the United States in general in 1979 is also a character. I read this book in June of 2008 and write this review in November of 2008 (where at least temporarily hope has returned), but I recognize that feeling of what has been called malaise. The Middle East is a mess, the Iranians hold us hostage and might have to be confronted, nothing is good on the television, on the radio, or at the movies, the President is not very popular, gold and silver prices are through the roof, we worry about inflation, the economy is in the toilet, and gas prices are way too high and we want a way out. Sound familiar? This is roughly June 1979, but it could also be June 2008. A general feeling that America has lost its way prevails throughout “Rabbit is Rich” and various characters worry that our best days are behind us. I am too young to remember 1979, but it seems like Updike captures the spirit of the time tremendously well.

This again is just a tremendous book about a very flawed man, during a very unique time, struggling with all of those very real, very everyman issues. The deliberate pace of the novel makes you feel like you are really sipping a glass of lemonade out on the porch, just a tremendous continuation of a tremendous series.