It's 1989, and Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom is far from restful. Fifty-six and overweight, he has a struggling business on his hands and a heart that is starting to fail. His family, too, are giving him cause for concern. His son Nelson is a wreck of a man, a cocaine addict with shattered self-respect. Janice, his wife, has decided that she wants to be a working girl. And as for Pru, his daughter-in-law, she seems to be sending out signals to Rabbit that he knows he should ignore, but somehow can't. He has to make the most of life, after all. He doesn't have much time left ...
Rabbit at Rest (Penguin Modern Classics)
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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)
Justin Cartwright was born in South Africa, educated there, in Michigan and Oxford University. He lives in London and has won a number of prizes for his 8 novels, including the Whitbread, Hawthornden and the Sunday Times (SA) Award. He has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.
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First Sentence
Standing amid the tan, excited post-Christmas crowd at the Southwest Florida Regional Airport, Rabbit Angstrom has a funny sudden feeling that what he has come to meet, what's floating in unseen about to land, is not his son Nelson and daughter-in-law Pru and their two children but something more ominous and intimately his: his own death, shaped vaguely like an airplane. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Standing amid the tan, excited post-Christmas crowd at the Southwest Florida Regional Airport, Rabbit Angstrom has a funny sudden feeling that what he has come to meet, what's floating in unseen about to land, is not his son Nelson and daughter-in-law Pru and their two children but something more ominous and intimately his: his own death, shaped vaguely like an airplane. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By J. Murray
Format:Paperback
This is by far the best of the four Rabbit books in my opinion, but, as others have said, you should read the others first for maximum enjoyment, and they are all very well worth reading. Updike sometimes places a bit too much emphasis on sex in his novels, for my taste, and Harry's epsidode with his daughter-in-law is not entirely convincing to this reader, but I still think this novel Rabbit at Rest is unsurpassed in 20th Century American fiction, even against such lively contenders as Philip Roth's An American Pastoral, Richard Ford's Independence Day or Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road.
To mention but one episode, Harry's lone drive to Florida, reflecting his flight in the earlier Rabbit Run, is an extraordinary tour-de-force with the car radio bombarding Harry's brain cells with news items current at the time (baseball results, evangelist Jim Bakker's trial, an ailing new-born panda, the Lockerbie bombing aftermath) and with "golden-oldie" radio programmes, evoking exquisitely painful/pleasurable memories of long-ago girlfriends, including his wife Janice, the "little mutt" who worked at the nut counter in Krolls long since defunct Department Store, whom he is currently running away from (yet again.)
A wonderful book and definitely in my top ten.
To mention but one episode, Harry's lone drive to Florida, reflecting his flight in the earlier Rabbit Run, is an extraordinary tour-de-force with the car radio bombarding Harry's brain cells with news items current at the time (baseball results, evangelist Jim Bakker's trial, an ailing new-born panda, the Lockerbie bombing aftermath) and with "golden-oldie" radio programmes, evoking exquisitely painful/pleasurable memories of long-ago girlfriends, including his wife Janice, the "little mutt" who worked at the nut counter in Krolls long since defunct Department Store, whom he is currently running away from (yet again.)
A wonderful book and definitely in my top ten.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
'Rabbit at Rest' is the final book in John Updike's 'Rabbit' series and MUST NOT BE READ BEFORE THE OTHERS!!
There's not much one can say about the plot without ruining the ending, but it will suffice to say that Updike's anti-hero (the wonderfully vivid Harry Angstrom), is now retired and battling with the side-effects of his junk food diet, as well as with his family - particularly the idiosyncracies of his son, Nelson. Here, Updike's themes are those of mortality, generational differences, and (of course) the nature of sexual relationships.
As always, Updike's prose is sharply honed and highly readable, and he eschews purple prose in order to convey the depth of his philosophical musings. On top of this, it is my firm belief that Angstrom is the most marvellously portrayed character in the contemporary American literature.
Read it, then read 'Licks of Love' - it contains a 'Rabbit' novella.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By Jon Swan
Format:Paperback
The first two Rabbit books didn't live up to the hype, for me, the first being awkward and a little dull, whereas the second, Rabbit Redux, was a bit implausible. The third got better with Updike's finely textured prose making the most banal of events seem worth reading about. This one, Rabbit at Rest, is just an awesome 500 page display of writing, that touches on mortality, lust and disgust, faded dreams, giving up. Updike has been funnier (in the Bech books, also massively recommended) but it takes someone special to make us so fascinated by such an ordinary everyman who messes up so easily, just like us. It was worth reading the early ones to get to this.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Nina-Jo Rees
Format:Paperback
The final in the quartet of justly renowned Rabbit books, this last book does what all the other three do so emphatically well: they create an intensely felt sense of time and place. The chararcters, while we read the novel, are almost as real and known to us as our own friends and family. Updike has a gift for metaphorical language and a poet's ear and eye for the world he creates. This book gathers up many threads and story- lines from the other books to round off the quartet in a satisfying way (perhaps just a little too neatly sometimes) but that is my only criticism of this supberb piece of writing. It just doesn't get any better. Updike is the master of the American novel and his unflinching gaze on small town America, its values and social mores, is as acute and sometimes savage as it could get.
Some sections are miraculous tours de force in their own right and could be lifted out of the novel as stand-alone short stories or essays. Rabbit's appearance as Uncle Sam in the Parade, the visit of the Japanese Toyota dealer and his devastating critique of American business and social ethics and the hosptial visits that Rabbit endures are wonderfully evoked and fit seamlessly into the novel as a whole. Updike rarely hits a false note and you can only marvel at his prose.
The miracle for me is that while I know Rabbit with all his faults and failures to be a really appalling human being in so many ways, yet I feel such affection for him and regret that this is the last of the four books. Read the others first though because you'll get so much more from this book if you do.
Some sections are miraculous tours de force in their own right and could be lifted out of the novel as stand-alone short stories or essays. Rabbit's appearance as Uncle Sam in the Parade, the visit of the Japanese Toyota dealer and his devastating critique of American business and social ethics and the hosptial visits that Rabbit endures are wonderfully evoked and fit seamlessly into the novel as a whole. Updike rarely hits a false note and you can only marvel at his prose.
The miracle for me is that while I know Rabbit with all his faults and failures to be a really appalling human being in so many ways, yet I feel such affection for him and regret that this is the last of the four books. Read the others first though because you'll get so much more from this book if you do.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Bought as a replacement for my water damaged hardback first edition. Well worth the re-read. Follows Rabbit Angstrom through his mid and later life trials and travels, Far from being at rest, he is put through family and social dramas against a background of late 20th century USA. It is beautifully written, and an engaging account of this apparently prosaic hero.
By M Chapman
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
must be a contender for the best 20th century US novel. the perspective is fantastic and the character insights show Updike in great form.
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
The Rabbit series of novels are all brilliant and this is the final one.The other 3 must be read first, though. Sadly,John Updike's work is overlooked in the U.K. - at least, it seems hard to find in this area. Try it and see for yourself.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
oh no
Oh no am really fed up. Just finished the last Rabbit book.Wish there was more.I am going to miss him
Published 5 months ago by vivien perkins
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent though exhaustive read
This is a monster of a book. I have read all the Rabbit books and this is by far the longest and most thorough. Read more
Published 7 months ago by Top Reader
4.0 out of 5 stars
Finally cooked in his own juices
Another decade on and Harry `Rabbit' Angstrom is well into his middle-age. He's 56, overweight, and still living the American dream. Read more
Published 12 months ago by sft
5.0 out of 5 stars
Personal struggles against a national backdrop
It's taken me a little while to get round to reading this final novel in the Rabbit series, not least because I wanted to have it to look forward to. Read more
Published 14 months ago by hiljean
5.0 out of 5 stars
The last and most poignant of the Rabbit quadrology
An ironic title for the last Updike's Rabbit quadrology. The last days of 1988, Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom is retired, morbidly obese and waiting at the Southwest Florida Regional... Read more
Published 23 months ago by Jo Bennie
5.0 out of 5 stars
Rabbit at Rest
The final book in the Rabbit series. A fine book about American culture. Although the book was second hand, it was obviously owned by somebody who loved it. Read more
Published on 18 Jan 2011 by JHvW
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