Rabbit, Run (Rabbit Angstrom, #1) in Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Nov 04, 2013 Stacie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: i-own, jc-reading

Looking forward to teaching this next semester!

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May 31, 2008 Steven rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1001, updike, esquire75, time-100, suburban-angst

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I picked up this book from the library with the full intention of loathing it. I had understood it to be Updike’s response to Kerouac’s “On the Road” depicting the fact that when young men go on the road the people left behind get hurt. I expected the book to be preachy and puritan, it was not. Instead, the book was the introduction to one of the greatest characters in American Literature. Esquire in naming it one of the 75 books that every man should read, summed it up perfectly, “… it’s about I picked up this book from the library with the full intention of loathing it. I had understood it to be Updike’s response to Kerouac’s “On the Road” depicting the fact that when young men go on the road the people left behind get hurt. I expected the book to be preachy and puritan, it was not. Instead, the book was the introduction to one of the greatest characters in American Literature. Esquire in naming it one of the 75 books that every man should read, summed it up perfectly, “… it’s about the guy you idolized in high school. And kitchen gadgets. And you.”

The novel begins with Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom playing a game of basketball with some local youths in his Pennsylvania hometown. Harry is a former high school basketball star, but now he is twenty-six, sells kitchen gadgets, is married to his high school girlfriend Janice, and is the father of a two-year old son named Nelson. Rabbit is going through what we have now come to call a quarter-life crisis. He finds his marriage and life stifling and isn’t terribly excited about being a father again as Janice is again pregnant. So, Rabbit goes out for cigarettes and he just keeps driving on and on, away from everything.

He eventually returns and visits his old high school basketball coach. He is convinced to go on a dinner double date (to what was apparently a rather exotic locale at the time, a Chinese restaurant) and meets Ruth Leonard. Ruth and Rabbit get to know one another and begin an affair. The affair crumbles, though on the night when Rabbit gets jealous and he coaxes Ruth into performing oral sex on him (which was just scandalous at the time) on the same night that he leaves to visit the hospital where his daughter, Rebecca June, is born. Rabbit goes back to his family, at least temporarily, and starts working at his father-in-law’s car dealership.

After a failed attempt of sex with his wife, Rabbit again leaves looking for Ruth. Janice, in a drunken and depressed stupor, then accidentally drowns their daughter. Rabbit has other problems, though, as he has now impregnated Ruth for demands that he either divorce Janice or she will abort their child. Rabbit, of course, can’t make a decision and he winds of fleeing.

As my rehashing of the plot makes clear, there is quite a bit of plot in this novel, and the themes are pretty adult for the late 1950s. Updike, however, is a master of the slow deliberate style where action progresses very slowly (McEwan is the best at this in my humble opinion). You would think that would make the sex scenes better, but they are not the best I have ever read. What I liked most about the book, though, is that the characters are all very human. You root for Rabbit sort of like the way you root for Tony Soprano, you know he is a real bad person, but you still identify with him. Nobody is completely angelic, even Janice is a bit of an alcoholic, and problems are never completely resolved. The book is also an exceptional retelling of how stifling middle-class suburbia can be, even for the hometown hero basketball player.
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Aug 30, 2011 Arianna rated it really liked it

This book leaves you reeling. It's hard to say how you feel about anything when it is done. It was fascinating watching the dominoes fall; every single action was in reaction to another, and you just wanted a chance to go back to the beginning and smooth things over, but they just kept falling. People tried to catch them, but their arms would fill and dominoes would spill out all over, no stopping them.

I found the book for the most part to be a really intriguing character study; Updike knows peo ...more

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Sep 28, 2018 Arukiyomi rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books

... exploring the crises that occur
in the minds of men who are too old
to have earned a mid-life crisis.

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May 09, 2017 Lori rated it really liked it

Completed book 1, Rabbit, Run. Wow. Updike recreated for me perfectly the feeling of being trapped as an adult in your early 20s when you really don't know what the hell you are doing. I wasn't as self destructive as Rabbit Angstrom, and hopefully I wasn't as shallow and selfish a person as he is, but the crux of the story---starting your life and realizing you've settled for something less than you wanted---resonated strongly with me. ...more

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