A review by elpanek
Rabbit at Rest by John Updike
5.0
The title implies that we will re-join Rabbit in a state of retirement, or possibly death, though when we start Rabbit at Rest, he's still semi-employed and not yet 60 years old. That choice to explore the gray zone between middle-age career-peak and elderly retirement makes this as interesting as a book about the transition to adulthood, a kind of coming-of-old-age.
What will happen to Rabbit? Is he capable of change? Those questions are part of what drew me back to this series, but the chief pleasure of reading it is in the descriptions of Rabbit's inner life. Other characters take center stage for a bit - his grown son Nelson, his stalwart wife Janice - and the fact that we're not seeing them entirely through Harry's eyes, as you would with a first-person novel, makes him easier to take. There are a few new additions to the cast of characters, and the change of scenery to a winter place in Florida provides enough variety to keep the series from feeling remotely stale. But for Harry, as for many others, the latter half of life is a kind of closing down, an inevitable turn inward.
Rabbit is still an unremarkable jerk, which makes the feat of making him so sympathetic and fascinating all the more remarkable. I kept thinking of Tony Soprano: laughably ignorant, infuriatingly cruel, but capable of profound reveries. Obviously, he's less angsty than Tony, a shortfall that is made up for by his high-strung son Nelson. How grating Harry's affability is to Nelson, but it's what kept me from wearying of the Rabbit novels - the way that Harry can blithely detach himself from the drama around him.
There's a richness of themes that builds up over the four books, particularly the last two, after the tragedy of Harry's early adulthood is out of the way. Cars are a recurring cultural sign post, showing the evolution of American sensibilities but also repositories of nostalgia and extensions of vulnerable bodies. It's Harry's body and its vulnerabilities that provide the primary drama this time, one that thankfully moves in unexpected directions.
All phases of an ordinary American adult life are described in this series, and in this phase, there are many extended descriptions worth savoring - a 4th of July parade, a grandfather/granddaughter outing at sea. But the one that stuck with me, the one I felt compelled to transcribe after reading, was a description of what it was like to stay in a condo alone as night fell, later in life, the empty rooms having "taken on the tension and menace of a living person who is choosing to remain motionless." Turning all of life - no matter how lonely or mundane - into something worth savoring is all you can hope for from a good book.
What will happen to Rabbit? Is he capable of change? Those questions are part of what drew me back to this series, but the chief pleasure of reading it is in the descriptions of Rabbit's inner life. Other characters take center stage for a bit - his grown son Nelson, his stalwart wife Janice - and the fact that we're not seeing them entirely through Harry's eyes, as you would with a first-person novel, makes him easier to take. There are a few new additions to the cast of characters, and the change of scenery to a winter place in Florida provides enough variety to keep the series from feeling remotely stale. But for Harry, as for many others, the latter half of life is a kind of closing down, an inevitable turn inward.
Rabbit is still an unremarkable jerk, which makes the feat of making him so sympathetic and fascinating all the more remarkable. I kept thinking of Tony Soprano: laughably ignorant, infuriatingly cruel, but capable of profound reveries. Obviously, he's less angsty than Tony, a shortfall that is made up for by his high-strung son Nelson. How grating Harry's affability is to Nelson, but it's what kept me from wearying of the Rabbit novels - the way that Harry can blithely detach himself from the drama around him.
There's a richness of themes that builds up over the four books, particularly the last two, after the tragedy of Harry's early adulthood is out of the way. Cars are a recurring cultural sign post, showing the evolution of American sensibilities but also repositories of nostalgia and extensions of vulnerable bodies. It's Harry's body and its vulnerabilities that provide the primary drama this time, one that thankfully moves in unexpected directions.
All phases of an ordinary American adult life are described in this series, and in this phase, there are many extended descriptions worth savoring - a 4th of July parade, a grandfather/granddaughter outing at sea. But the one that stuck with me, the one I felt compelled to transcribe after reading, was a description of what it was like to stay in a condo alone as night fell, later in life, the empty rooms having "taken on the tension and menace of a living person who is choosing to remain motionless." Turning all of life - no matter how lonely or mundane - into something worth savoring is all you can hope for from a good book.