Rabbit Redux (Penguin Modern Classics)
and over 900,000 other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Trade in Rabbit Redux (Penguin Modern Classics) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
It's 1969, and the times are changing. America is about to land a man on the moon, the Vietnamese war is in full swing, and racial tension is on the rise. Things just aren't as simple as they used to be - at least, not for Rabbit Angstrom. His wife has left him with his teenage son, his job is under threat and his mother is dying. Suddenly, into his confused life - and home - comes Jill, an eighteen-year-old runaway who becomes his lover. But when she invites her friend to stay, a young black radical named Skeeter, the pair's fragile harmony soon begins to fail ...
About the Author
John (Hoyer) Updike (1932-) American novelist, short story writer and poet, internationally known for his novels RABBIT, RUN (1960), RABBIT REDUX (1971), RABBIT IS RICH (1981), and RABBIT AT REST (1990). His latest novel is VILLAGES (Penguin, 2005).
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
First Sentence
MEN emerge pale from the little printing plant at four sharp, ghosts for an instant, blinking, until the outdoor light overcomes the look of constant indoor light clinging to them. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
MEN emerge pale from the little printing plant at four sharp, ghosts for an instant, blinking, until the outdoor light overcomes the look of constant indoor light clinging to them. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Still stewing in his own juices,
By sft (UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Rabbit Redux (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)
Rabbit is back and it's 1969. Set against the backdrop of the first moon landing and the Vietnam war Harry Angstrom is once again thrown into personal turmoil. His wife leaves him for a co-worker, his mother is slowly dying, and his job is none too secure. Harry repopulates his house, and his life, with an itinerant 18-year-old rich girl and a black messianic veteran. His son Nelson remains at home with his father and has to come to terms with this new bohemian lifestyle. It's all sex and drugs and rock and roll (well, the blues anyway) for Harry and chums, but the breakdown of his marriage and the death of his first child haunt him throughout.Rabbit is as flawed and conflicted as ever. At once open-minded and bigoted, he remains patriotic, even jingoistic, as he continues his struggles to grasp the American dream. And, although his behaviour is at times little short of incredulous, he remains a mostly sympathetic protagonist. And, of course, Updike's prose is as sharp and insightful as ever. An essential read for all lovers of contemporary American literature.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Apocalypse redux!,
By Demob Happy "jamesewan" (London / Grenoble) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Rabbit Redux (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)
`Rabbit Redux` is the second in Updike's quartet of novels chronicling the life and times of America as seen through the eyes of everyman Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. Written - as with the other three - at the tale end of one decade (here, the 1960s) and published at the beginning of the next, Redux finds its eponymous anti-hero in suitably chaotic circumstances: his wife has left him for another man, he shacks up with a promiscuous teenage runaway, and her friend, a black radical named Skeeter, moves in with them.Whereas `Rabbit, Run' was virtually perspiring with dank verisimilitude - all-too queasily human and corporeal - Redux comes across as a kind of maddening metaphorical play. Whereas Rabbit's first adventures concerned intimate, character-driven themes, this second novel is a more representational scenario that reflects the upheaval of the generation. Social dysfunction, free love and black power literally invade Rabbit's smallville suburban address, turning his house into a theatre of the late-1960s psyche. While Redux doesn't always ring true as a credible study of character, it's air of volatility and hysteria capture the spirit of the period, in which the civil rights movement and the dismantlement of the conservative values of the 1950s were reaching a fever pitch. Whereas `Rabbit, Run' was conspicuously apolitical, Redux is almost all politics, with large sections of the book played out in Rabbit's living room like some kind of deranged allegorical play. Harry Angstrom is still rather passive, buffeted by the events that befall him, but this time he goes along with the trip. Despite losing his job, his house and his wife - albeit temporarily - Rabbit gets a necessary dose of the freedom of the times, hence the redux (from the Latin meaning "brought back, restored") of the title. Profane, provocative and almost pornographic, it is a credit to Updike's writing that this is also intensely imaginative and occasionally beautiful.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece of post-industrial America,
By A Customer
This review is from: Rabbit Redux (Paperback)
Updike's evocative language and ghostly narrative style combine with brilliantly drawn characters to unearth the bleak voice of the post industrial silent majority. Its grim reading. The moral of the story is that in this world of adultery, faded dreams and shattered prospects life continues, is relentless and seldom will man, in this case Rabbit strive to achieve or hold on to anything of lasting consequence. A brilliant look at the pitfalls of the affluent, leisure society.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
