Pros: This book is proof that Karma is real and what goes around comes around/Though he's a complete idiot, Updike makes it so you just can't help but feel a little bad for Rabbit but on the other hand, he really does bring all of this on himself.
Cons: Sex, Drugs, Racism, the Vietnam war, there was a lot going on in this book and again, Rabbit Angstrom just doesn't seem to have a brain. Every decision he made just left me shaking my head and sighing.
Full Review:
It's been ten years since Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom literally ran from his wife and child and into the arms of another woman. And this book took the ending of Rabbit, Run and did a complete 180.
Rabbit is back with Janice and is working as a Lintopyist at the same newspaper as his father. All he knows about his former lover, Ruth, is that she bought a farm somewhere and raises chickens. He's more or less just going through the motions of life, each day kind of blending into the next. His son Nelson will soon be a teenager, moody and sullen and Janice, who works at her fathers' car dealership, has been spending an awful lot of time down at the lot and Rabbit has a sinking feeling that she's up to something.
His suspicions are, of course, correct. In an ironic twist, Janice leaves Rabbit for another man, a co-worker of hers, Charlie Stavros. Now faced with exactly what he did to Janice, ten years prior, Rabbit's left rather stunned but, honestly not too broken up about it. He continues doing what he's doing until one night, while visiting a jazz club downtown with a black co-worker, Rabbit meets Babe, an older jazz pianist, Skeeter, a young, Vietnam vet and Jill, a rich while girl who's run away from home after the sudden death of her father.
This meeting was originally to set Rabbit up with Babe but he decides to be a good Samaritan and takes Jill home instead. Mind you, she's only eighteen and Rabbit is Rabbit so...his motives aren't entirely pure. But, he does give Jill a home and she and Nelson hit it off. Though he knows he's the talk of the town and rumors are flying, he doesn't care all that much. He just keeps doing what he's doing until one day, he comes home to find Skeeter sitting in his living room.
There was a raid on the jazz club and Skeeter was arrested for possession but he skipped bail and so, what better place to hideout than good ol' Rabbit Angstrom's. Now, Rabbit's harboring a fugitive, sleeping with someone who's barely legal and his son, Nelson, is embroiled in it all.
Things of course, come to a head in truly shocking Updike fashion. I've learned quickly that characters in the Rabbit series are fleeting, fragile things. And, of course, Rabbit being Rabbit, he still somehow finds a way to just, get through things and kind of ends up back where he started.
This was an interesting addition to the series and I find myself truly perplexed but also morbidly curious as to what in the world Rabbit Angstrom could do, to make his life anymore morally ambiguous. I hope to find out in the next book, Rabbit is Rich.
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