Product Description

Harry Angstrom was a star basketball player in high school and that was the best time of his life. Now in his mid-20s, his work is unfulfilling, his marriage is moribund, and he tries to find happiness with another woman. But happiness is more elusive than a medal, and Harry must continue to run--from his wife, his life, and from himself, until he reaches the end of the road and has to turn back....

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70911 in Books
• Published on: 1996-08-27
• Released on: 1996-08-27
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
"Brilliant and poignant...By his compassion, clarity of insight and crystal-bright prose, he makes Rabbit's sorrow his and our own."
--The Washington Post

Review
"Brilliant and poignant...By his compassion, clarity of insight and crystal-bright prose, he makes Rabbit's sorrow his and our own."
--The Washington Post

The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature
Novel by John Updike, published in 1960. The novel's hero is Harry ("Rabbit") Angstrom, a 26-year-old former high-school athletic star who is disillusioned with his present life and flees from his wife and child in a futile search for grace and order. Three sequels--Rabbit Redux (1971), Rabbit Is Rich (1981), and Rabbit at Rest (1990)--continue the story of Rabbit in the succeeding decades of his life.

Customer Reviews

A sophisticated but playful Rabbit we have!

In the beginning, I was sort of depressed. the subject matter, the darkly setting, uneasy texture. However, I liked to read gradually. I loved it. And the main character of the novel is portrayed with sophisticatedly. A complex personality but somewhat amusing and certainly playful. I look forward to reading next Rabbit novels!

wishing for a zero-stars option
I read this book 5 years ago, learned to hate John Updike, and haven't picked up a book of his since. (Looking at the book on amazon and some of the other one-star reviews, maybe I should give his more recent works a shot, but this one has kept me angry for a long time.) Today, I started what seems like it will be a bad book that described "plump, round buttocks," and naturally thought again of Updike and how much I had hated his description of women. I'm not quite motivated enough to diss him to go and check out another copy from the library to search for the phrases that I hated the most (white mounds of flesh..), but I was delighted to see that I was not alone in my disdain for this novel and this author (at least at this phase of his writing..), and I am pleased to add another single-star (regrettably not zero-star) review to his depressingly high pile of praise.

No Way Out
Harry Angstrom is the quintessential eternal youth, whose marriage turns out to be an albatross. The marriage not only deadens his spirit but also accelerates his descent into decadence. Harry's vital life spirit totally rejects the encumbrance of a forced marriage; however, in early 1960s working class America, quick divorces are not the common panacea that they are today. And with a young child and second on the way, Harry's only escape through a labyrinth of guilt and social mores will be a secretive and ultimately an internal one.

Everything about Harry Angstrom speaks of spring--it is no accident that Updike sets the action of the novel during spring--and he finds himself married to the dead of winter. It is this commonly experienced conflict, crystallized through the eyes of an astute Everyman, that calibrates the smoldering action in Updike's masterful study of a fallen society. There are no Hollywood endings here; Updike's mission is not to offer hope or solace but rather understanding. The internal monologues served up so plentifully in this novel are a precursor to the "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus" studies that would come 40 years later.

The present-tense narration is lyrical and poignant, playing out like a 250-page prose poem, replete with unforgettable descriptions of the commonest things. While reading this novel, I was constantly in awe of how great a student of humanity and its foibles Updike kept proving himself to be, acquiring such an extraordinary amount of intimate knowledge of the mental workings of men, women, toddlers, clergymen, the elderly, the decadent, the square, the working class stiff--and all astoundingly by the age of 27. But even compared to later laureates, they just don't write them like this anymore. My favorite line in the entire book comes from the last page; it sums up the dilemma not only of Harry Angstrom but also of modern society as a whole in one simple, memorable sentence: "Funny, how what makes you move is so simple and the field you must move in is so crowded."