Rabbit Is Rich, John Updike
Rabbit Is Rich, John Updike
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Rabbit Is Rich

Author: John Updike

Narrator: Arthur Morey

Unabridged: 19 hr 25 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/03/2009

Synopsis

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The middle-aged hero of Rabbit, Run, returns—from one of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century. 

The hero of John Updike's Rabbit, Run (1960), ten years after the hectic events described in Rabbit Redux (1971), has come to enjoy considerable prosperity as Chief Sales Representative of Springer Motors, a Toyota agency in Brewer, Pennsylvania. The time is 1979: Skylab is falling, gas lines are lengthening, the President collapses while running in a marathon, and double-digit inflation coincides with a deflation of national confidence. Nevertheless, Harry Angstrom feels in good shape, ready to enjoy life at last—until his son, Nelson, returns from the West, and the image of an old love pays a visit to his lot. New characters and old populate these scenes from Rabbit's middle age, as he continues to pursue, in his erratic fashion, the rainbow of happiness.

About The Author

John Updike was the author of more than sixty books, eight of them collections of poetry. His novels, including The Centaur, Rabbit Is Rich, and Rabbit at Rest, won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in January 2009.Arthur Morey has acted in a number of productions, both Off-Broadway in New York and Off-Loop in Chicago. He’s won several Earphones Awards and has been repeatedly listed by AudioFile Magazine as a Best Voice over the years.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Mark on February 04, 2025

After reading number two in this series (Rabbit Redux, 3-stars), Rabbit is Rich has John Updike smashing the ball all over the park, he’s back to his deliciously, wicked, best. We catch Harry (Rabbit) Angstrom in 1979. After the disasters that occurred in Rabbit Redux, things appear to have settled d......more

Goodreads review by MJ on April 23, 2012

Glib Capsule Review: Rabbit cracks wise. Rabbit talks about cars. Rabbit scrutinises female anatomy. Rabbit bawls out no-good lowlife son. Rabbit’s actions receive entirely undeserved Harvard-strength descriptive torrent. Rabbit screws his wife. Rabbit fantasises about screwing his friend’s young wif......more

Goodreads review by Jay on July 18, 2024

After experiencing an early midlife crisis in book two of this series, Rabbit Angstrom is now in his midlife period. His son has grown to a young man and is now the mirror-image of what Rabbit was at that age - uncertain of himself. Rabbit has seemingly straightened his own life out and doesn't need......more

Goodreads review by Michael on February 09, 2017

Watching Rabbit Angstrom at almost my age was fascinating. The text is deliciously Proustian and I love the perspective on the 70s. The world microcosm Brewster is alive fascinating as a study of America in the waning years of the 20th century's hangover after the 60s. His descriptions of human rela......more

Goodreads review by Fabian on October 21, 2018

This third decade of Rabbit’s shenanigans is... incredibly dull. Didn’t the 70’s include all that Disco & outrageous fashion and pre-80s outrageous & vapid opulence? It does exist in Rabbit’s (albeit OUR) America, but Rabbit has become such an old man (at the age of 46!) that he cannot enjoy his mon......more

Quotes

"The reviewers seemed to be under the impression that the hero was a terrible character. It's incredible! No, I think it's the most interesting American novel I've read in quite a long time"

—Mary McCarthy, interviewed in The Paris Review

"The power of the novel comes from a sense, not absolutely unworthy of Thomas Hardy, that the universe hangs over our fates like a great sullen hopeless sky. There is real pain in the book, and a touch of awe"

—Norman Mailer, Esquire

"...An American protest against all the attempts to impress upon us the 'healthy, life-loving and comic' as our standard for novels. It is sexy, in bad taste, violent, and basically cynical. And good luck to it."

—Angus Wilson, naming three Books of the Year in the Observer

And Rabbit Redux

"Against all odds, Rabbit Redux is a sequel that succeeds; it is in every respect uncannily superior to its distinguished predecessor and deserves to achieve even greater critical and popular acclaim."

—Brendan Gill, The New Yorker

"I can think of no stronger vindication of the claims of essentially realistic fiction than this extraordinary synthesis of the disparate elements of contemporary experience. Rabbit Redux is a great achievement, by far the most audacious and successful book Updike has written."

—The New York Times Book Review

Awards

  • National Book Awards
  • National Book Critics Circle Awards
  • Pulitzer Prize
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