Rabbit Redux (Rabbit Angstrom, #2) in Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Jun 03, 2008 Steven rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1001, updike, suburban-angst

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Perhaps the harshest and most convoluted of the Rabbit series, Rabbit Redux was also perhaps my least favorite. Just like the 1969 setting of the book, the tone is often violent and confrontational. At times, reading this book gave an almost uneasy feeling, you knew that tensions were everywhere, either about to blow up or actually blowing up. I was not around in 1969, but for all I have read, seen, and heard, this book captures that time period exceptionally well.

In this novel, things are reall Perhaps the harshest and most convoluted of the Rabbit series, Rabbit Redux was also perhaps my least favorite. Just like the 1969 setting of the book, the tone is often violent and confrontational. At times, reading this book gave an almost uneasy feeling, you knew that tensions were everywhere, either about to blow up or actually blowing up. I was not around in 1969, but for all I have read, seen, and heard, this book captures that time period exceptionally well.

In this novel, things are really not much better for Rabbit Angstrom. He is nearing forty, works in a blue collar job in his hometown and does not much like the world around him. Rabbit is both a fan of U.S. involvement in Vietnam and not a big fan of the social activism all around him. He is greeted rather early on with the news that his wife Janice will be leaving him for a Greek named Stavros with whom she works with at her father’s car lot. Rabbit and his twelve-year-old son Nelson are left at home to deal with things.

In a rather convoluted plot twist, Rabbit and Nelson are joined first by a wealthy white eighteen-year-old hippie named Jill. Because it is the Summer of Love and Jill is quite used to using her body as capital, a sexual relationship is eventually consummated. They are then joined by the cynical drug-dealing Skeeter, a Black man and Vietnam vet. The entire relationship between Rabbit, Nelson, Jill, and Skeeter is toxic on so many levels. While Rabbit’s positions about race and Vietnam are softened, you just know that things will not end well. Things eventually fall apart when there is a massive house fire that ultimately kills Jill and causes Skeeter to flee.

As I mentioned, a couple of the things I did not like about the book was that it seemed like there was always this tension coming through, sometimes manifesting itself in violence, sometimes not. Whereas most of the secondary characters in the book were tremendous, I did not feel like the characters of Jill and Skeeter were as interesting or multi-faceted as I would have liked. I think perhaps the thing that bothered me the most was that you just knew that the atmosphere was not a good one for a twelve-year-old boy (Nelson) and that made me rather uncomfortable.

In sharp contrast to the Jill and Skeeter characters, which really disappointed, was the tremendous growth of the character of Janice. As mentioned, the book begins with her leaving Rabbit for her co-worker, Stavros (who winds up being rather redeeming in this book, as well as others in the series). Janice makes it a point to let Rabbit know that Stavros turns her on both physically and emotionally in a way that Rabbit does not. Things aren’t as simple as all that, though, she also wants Rabbit to fight for her, but he is just not that type of guy. I say this from the perspective of a male, fully aware of how sexist it sounds, but Janice’s infidelity seems just so much more jarring. I’ve read that it is much more damaging for a man to hear that the infidelity was just “a sex thing” with no love attached, whereas women tend to generally prefer it to be “just sex” with no romantic attachment involved. In terms of pure numbers, Rabbit is clearly the bad guy in the marriage, he definitely has strayed more often, but I say this from the perspective of a man, Janice’s actions just seem a whole lot more devastating. Further, she also abandons her son, Nelson, in order to be with Stavros, something that is hard to forgive (and again I know that is sexist because we know that Rabbit abandoned his son in the previous novel to be with Ruth Leonard). However, in many ways, Janice is almost blameless and is the much more sympathetic character. Who could blame her for leaving Rabbit, however temporarily? I just think it is important to remember for posterity that Janice is not quite the saint and blameless victim that she is sometimes portrayed (often self-portrayed as) in future Rabbit books. Either way, the Janice character has a lot more heft in “Rabbit Redux” than she had in “Rabbit, Run” in my opinion.

Of course, the greatest aspect of the book was Updike’s tremendous portrait of the human condition. He writes the angst and disappointment and guilt of his protagonist so very well. This book has the same very deliberate style, with the same very decent sex scenes. Again, Rabbit is not a very sympathetic character, he is not only flawed, he is a pretty bad dude. Yet, Updike’s mastery pulls you in and in the same way that you pull for other great morally ambiguous characters, you pull for Rabbit Angstrom.

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Oct 26, 2018 Arukiyomi rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001-books

... here we have people
whose existence is entirely pointless.

Support independent book blogs, read my review at Arukiyomi.com.

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Jun 30, 2008 Heather rated it liked it

The main characters from the first book reappear older but not necessarily wiser. Each main character makes choices that lead to an escalating situation of bizarre circumstances.

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