My favorite of the tetralogy. Probably because this asshole finally dies.

Q: Where oh where will Rabbit go to rest? Where will it all--all four decades worth of this, an all American life--culminate-- and how?A: In Florida; and boringly.This is a tremendously slow trek through Harry Angstrom’s last year and we see the guy eat himself to death and burn bridges with family and friends. (Eh… what’s new?) The sick sad life of the American Male: the fourth novel is overkill; while it's perfectly nice to revisit some of Rabbit’s highlights and (mostly) low-lights, how o how...

While the average person may have been conducting online searches for holiday recipes this week, I was doing my own Google search. . .which type of cigarettes did John Updike smoke? (My poor, poor children. No Waldorf salad or candied yams for you).That query provided me with information that I already knew, that Mr. Updike died from lung cancer, as a result of his nasty smoking habit, but my actual question wasn't answered.Which kind of cigarettes did he smoke??Do you know? I don't. But I want

This last book in the Harry Angstrom cycle by Updike looks at the end of Rabbit's life and disillusionment at the end of the 80s. It is worthy of the Pulitzer it garnered (Updike's second after the equally superb Rabbit is Rich). Suffice it to say that there is the same set of characters which we know from the previous books and a nice circular return at the very end. An essential read for understanding America on the eve of the 90s.It is an excellent book which explores the themes of aging and

I didn't expect to be sad at the end of this. But after four novels, each gradually getting deeper into the character, moving from about 300 pages in the first to almost 500 by the last, I've logged in a lot of time with Harry Angstrom. And so when this one brought his story around to the end, I got a little sad. It's an accomplishment to write a character essentially from birth to death. And so much of Rabbit's story involves all of the mundane details of small-town life -- watching TV, knowing...

According to the Chinese Zodiac, 2017 was year of the Rooster, but for ME, it was year of Rabbit. This year, I discovered with great glee, the brilliance of John Updike, and I've hopped through the four books he wrote about the guy we all love to hate (or hate to love), Rabbit Angstrom.I'm bidding goodbye to this flawed horndog, with misty eyes. Somehow, from the beginning, despite his reprehensible, often misogynistic ways (and his overuse of the "C" word), I liked the bastard. From his family-...

"What's a life supposed to be?" asks Rabbit's daughter-in-law. "They don't give you another for comparison." But at its best, that's what Updike has done with the Rabbit books. He's given us another, and it's this terrific shambling asshat of an everyman, a former athlete who goes exactly to seed right before our eyes.Updike's ability to inhabit such a normal person with sympathy and honesty puts these books, taken together, in the Great American Novel pantheon. He's now covered Rabbit from his

John Updike closes out his quartet of Rabbit novels with what can only be described as a masterpiece. He won his second Pulitzer for "Rabbit at Rest." Only Booth Tarkington and William Faulkner had previously won the Pulitzer more than once.Rabbit is semi-retired. He has a condo on the Gulf side of Florida. He maintains his historic Pennsylvania home. But things are falling apart, literally and figuratively. HIV has become an epidemic. A jet disintegrates over Lockerbie, Scotland. Cocaine is a p...

I dreaded reading this book and I have to admit that it took me two weeks to get through the last 50 pages. I miss Harry Angstrom not as if a dear friend has died, but as if I have died myself and yet somehow remain around to mourn my own loss. What's odd is that I didn't really like Rabbit. I did understand him though, in a way that I've never understood anyone aside from myself. That, to me, is Updike's true gift: chipping away to an unvarnished life to expose the raw emotion and thought upon

I was not warned about John Updike until ten years after I first read his work. As a contrarian, the very warning I received (“Don’t go near him”) in 2018 had the effect of making me want to further explore his magnum opus. The complaints about Updike, who died in 2009 (shortly before I was required to read his youthful short story “A&P”), were pervasive enough that it is understandable why most readers would shy away from his body of works completely. “A penis with a thesaurus,” David Foster Wa...

Eat a balanced diet. Exercise regularly. Avoid excessive drinking. Don't fuck your daughter-in-law. Lot of good life-style advice in this book...

I read this at a suggestion from a book group. I had earlier in my life been unable to get through RABBIT, RUN, but thought maybe added maturity would help me appreciate Updike's writing more. I was wrong. Even his gift with words (the reason for the second star in the rating) wasn't enough to make up for the thoroughly unlikable characters and depressing picture of several wasted lives. Even the style of writing I often found difficult, making the reading of this novel a slow and painful experi...

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This is probably my favorite of the four books. It sums up Rabbit's life, as he recalls all he and his family have been through, and he finally comes to an acceptance of his being. I liked how Janice comes into her own and is able to raise her self-esteem and confidence. And, hopefully, their son Nelson has also learned a few lessons and has started to grow up. It is a very interesting series, especially since each of the four books was written ten years apart. It is fascinating to look back thr...

As this is the book I'm reading at the moment I thought I'd use this space to underline how ridiculous I find the idea of the Reading challenge. Books aren't like chilies and I can't see the point in trying to consume as many as possible within the year, as if this was some kind of idiotic competition. In fact it seems to trivialise and undermine the whole point of reading, especially the kind of deep reading that is only possible in books as opposed to the surface skimming which we dedicate to

Perfect ending. I got choked up and I loved it. After 1500+ pages of Rabbit, even with all his flaws I'm going to miss him. Living through four decades along with all his unfiltered thoughts was a roller coaster ride.Rabbit, Run was a good introduction to this, at many times, unlikable character.Rabbit Redux was the least enjoyable of the four books and, frankly, hard to stomach in a lot of parts.Finally, Rabbit Is Rich a Rabbit at Rest were the best of the four books and ended the tetralogy nic...

Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom. A product of his place and time in history: a white American male, born a few years before WW2 and making his way through the four decades following it. The years his country largely left its mark over the better part of the world in all the direct and indirect ways such a thing is possible.No wonder he keeps acting throughout his life, and the four books that depict it in brilliant (and at times excruciatingly detailed) prose, as a trusting and entitled child, confiden...

Just as the first hundred pages of RABBIT, RUN were written in a breathless pace to match their manic tone, the last hundred pages of RABBIT AT REST, which mirror the beginning moments of the series, linger on in a depressingly meaningless manner. Highway billboards, trite pop tunes from past decades, and trivial news headlines about baseball players blur with the names and minutiae of a history book, the snapshot memories of Harry's somewhat uneventful life, and the chronic ups and downs of his...

Pulitzer Prize winner 1991. Oh my gosh! I can't believe I'm saying goodbye to Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom and Janice and the whole family! This was the fourth and final book in the Rabbit series. I seriously hated to see it end. It was so good - I just zoomed through 500+ pages. There's not much to say here that hasn't already been said. Updike had an incredible gift for observing life and portraying it in a way that we can all relate to. This particular novel was following Harry at age 55, but not

Updike's Rabbit series is, quite simply, some of the best literature I have ever read, and this last book in the series is the best yet.Throughout, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom has been a pretty reprehensible character and he still maintains those chops in this book. He is the unchallenged all-time champion of jerks, but here, even Rabbit sinks to new lows. The things he does are enough to make the reader thoroughly despise him. And yet...He is so completely and utterly human. It wasn't his ambition