Rabbit Redux
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article or section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please help improve this article or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since December 2005. (help, talk) |
Rabbit Redux is a 1971 novel by John Updike. It is the second book in his "Rabbit" series, which begins with Rabbit, Run, and is followed by Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit At Rest. There is also a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered.
Rabbit Redux is a 1971 novel written by John Updike. The book is the second entry in the four-novel Rabbit series, which follows the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom from 1960 to 1990. Rabbit Redux finds the former high-school basketball star working a dead-end job and approaching middle age in downtrodden and fictional Brewer, Pennsylvania, the city of his birth. When his wife leaves him for another man, Harry and his twelve-year-old son are at loose ends, and the chaotic state of the nation circa 1969 finds its way into Harry's home. Updike's recurring themes of guilt, sex, and death are joined here by racism, as Harry plays host to an African-American named Skeeter, a cynical, drug-dealing Vietnam vet who engages Harry in debates about the war and race relations. A white teenager fleeing suburban Connecticut, Jill, enthralls Harry and his son, and the four of them make a scandalous household emblematic of the Summer of Love's most confusing implications, culminating in a house fire that kills Jill. Harry and Janice are finally reconciled at book's end.
