Rating: 
Summary: Over the top, but a decent read
Review: A good, but not great novel -- the weak link in the chain of the "Rabbit" novels. Still worth reading, though.The book would have been as good as the others if the supporting characters were not so embarrassingly stereotypical (especially Skeeter, the almost offensively caricatured unpredictable angry black man). Updike sometimes seems to be trying to get into their heads as effectively as he does with Rabbit's own family, but he doesn't succeed -- and the plot goes over the line into unbelievability too, in my opinion. All that said, this book is full of memorable scenes and characters, and Updike has caught the mood of what a man in Rabbit's situation, and at Rabbit's age, would be feeling. The prose style is also no longer poignant and melancholy like that of "Rabbit, Run," but is more vigorous and sharp--which fits the scene he's setting.
Rating:
Summary: Over the top, but a decent read
Review: A good, but not great novel -- the weak link in the chain of the "Rabbit" novels. Still worth reading, though. The book would have been as good as the others if the supporting characters were not so embarrassingly stereotypical (especially Skeeter, the almost offensively caricatured unpredictable angry black man). Updike sometimes seems to be trying to get into their heads as effectively as he does with Rabbit's own family, but he doesn't succeed -- and the plot goes over the line into unbelievability too, in my opinion. All that said, this book is full of memorable scenes and characters, and Updike has caught the mood of what a man in Rabbit's situation, and at Rabbit's age, would be feeling. The prose style is also no longer poignant and melancholy like that of "Rabbit, Run," but is more vigorous and sharp--which fits the scene he's setting.
Rating: 
Summary: adultery and gloom makes for a great novel!
Review: Ah yes, how nice to settle in with another Rabbit novel by that patron-Saint of adultery John Updike. Here we meet a Rabbit (how sad that no one remembers or cares about his beloved nickname except Updike and us) ten years older, just as gloomy and perhaps more irascible and conservative. But I always stand by my belief that Rabbit is more intelligent than everybody around him even when he is spouting nonesense. I have talked to a few people who think him stupid but i feel that he has a naturally expansive nature, and is not afraid to look at life at its ugliest and most awful. Of course Janice is back, and is presented as more complex and enigmatic, as she herself is involved in an affair with someone else. I thought Updike wrote of the relationship between Rabbit and his son wonderfully; one could sense acutely the admiration Nelson had for him, though at times it was difficult for them to relate. The relationship between Nelson and Rabbit reminded me of that of Peter and Caldwell in The Centuar. Beyond this there is a mad cast of characters and some scenes of absolutely high drama. Sad fires in the middle of the night, lessons dictated to Rabbit about the history of racism in America, stress between Rabbit and both his wife and his son, the troubled teenage girl who happens to fall into the picture and much more. I did not think this book a dissapointment at all (in fact I applaud Updike's courage for attempting to follow up the brilliant Rabbit, Run at all) and also feel that this book has more narrative explosiveness and drama than did the earlier novel. It goes without saying that this book is written beautifully and filled with tons of images which my unartistic brain would never have dreamed of. From the enchanting opening scene of workers freshly emerging into the overwhelming daylight that renders them all looking like ghosts coming into focus, Updike proceeds to sprinke the dialouge and narrative with bizzare images which compel one to stare at things anew, with wide-open eyes. It is in such little details that Updike exhibits his genius and original mind. If this were merely a novel "about life and love in America" I would have no interest in it whatsoever. The real beauty of the novel is simply Updike's shimmering prose and originality of textured thought (who else would describe a couple holding hands and walking away in the night as "a starfish leapt in the dark as they walked away" - such images make a novel).
Rating:
Summary: The Great Sixties Novel
Review: All the Rabbit books have their pleasures, but this one really stands out. Not only that, it is the great 1960s novel -- eventhough it didn't arrive until the early 1970s. Updike, no less than Bob Dylan, brought it all back home: the war, hippies, riots. He took all the turmoil of his times and put it on a purely domestic level. A thousand years from now, someone will pick up this book to understand life in that turbulent decade, and the picture they receive will be true.
Rating:
Summary: Documentary of a dysfunctional family
Review: Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is the epitome of the guy who peaked in high school. His days of glory as a high school basketball star have dissolved into a mundane adulthood. "Rabbit Redux" opens in the summer of 1969, and while Apollo II is on its way to the moon, Ted Kennedy drives his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, nightly newscasts report death tolls in Vietnam, and race riots and war protests are blazing throughout the nation, Rabbit works solemnly as a typesetter at a printing plant. (Amusing samples of Rabbit's work are shown, including his occasional distraction-induced mistakes.) We see the development of Rabbit's relationships with his growing son Nelson, his dying mother, his doting father, and his aspiring actress sister Mim. Rabbit's wife Janice, stifled by their stagnant marriage, moves into the apartment of a man with whom she is having an affair. In the wake of her departure, Rabbit meets Skeeter, a militant black Vietnam vet, and Jill, a spoiled rich 18-year-old runaway. Jill moves into Rabbit's house and takes on an ambiguous daughter/lover role. Rabbit also reluctantly allows Skeeter, who has jumped bail on a drug possession charge, to take shelter in his house. An interesting set of archetypes is now thrust into close quarters: Rabbit's suburban apple green clapboard house representing middle class America; Rabbit, traditional average white American values; Jill, the younger white liberal (hippie) faction; and Skeeter, the black power movement. Skeeter engages Rabbit in heated debates about racism, slavery, and Vietnam, with Jill acting somewhat as a mediator. Rabbit spouts his opinions authoritatively but without much conviction. Possibly lacking the mental endurance to keep up with Skeeter's rhetoric, Rabbit's ideological conflict with Skeeter gradually gives way to concession. He learns to enjoy the presence of these two strangers in his house; it could be that Nelson, Jill, and Skeeter comprise the family he's always wanted. In his discussions with Rabbit and his lifestyle at the house, Skeeter emerges as the most complex character in the novel. Embodying the rage and confusion from centuries of oppression, he is alternately resentful, wily, domestic, pedantic, perverse, or paranoid, depending on the unpredictable trajectory of his disposition. He is as natural playing basketball with Nelson during the day as he is administering drugs to Jill in exchange for sexual favors at night. He caricatures himself as an ingratiating Uncle Tom in the presence of a cab driver, exhorts Rabbit and Nelson to read passages from his books aloud, and imagines himself a future messiah. As in "Rabbit, Run," there is a tragic climax, an event that brings this curious living arrangement to an abrupt end. As a sequel, "Rabbit Redux" reflects the time in which it was written more emphatically than "Rabbit, Run" did; the language is more explicit, the pacing is more frenetic, everybody seems just a little crazier as the country seems to be on the verge of self-destruction. Updike uses this point in history as a brilliant perspective through which to view the development of the Angstroms as characters.
Rating:
Summary: Weak but not a total loss
Review: Having moments ago finished reading "Rabbit Redux", my immediate impression is of a highly flawed book that, just barely, saves itself in the end by bringing the two most interesting characters in the series back together. Rabbit IS a rabbit, he twitches his nose and moves wherever it tells him, and even when it takes him through a Disneyland of unbelievably cliched characters like Jill and Skeeter (a deadened teenaged runaway and psychotic black veteran, respectively, who Rabbit takes into his house when his wife leaves him) it's at least worthwhile to follow. Janice, his estranged wife, is generally undeveloped because Updike spends so much more time on Rabbit, but when she enters the book in any form she attracts attention. I hope Updike gives her more "page time" in the next two novels, she deserves it.
What Updike seems to be trying to do is create a condensed Sixties in this book, particularly the middle section: we have the Conservative (Rabbit), who has a lot to learn, we have the radical (Skeeter), who has been driven insane through oppression and needs to vent, we have the searching hippie (Jill), who needs love and understanding because the world has let her down, and we have the child (Nelson), who could go in any of three directions. There's a love-in, a be-in, a history lesson, a fight or two, and a trip through the countryside to see how the nation is faring. And it ends in conflagration, as the real Sixties did; substitute a burning house for Altamont, and there you have it. The problem is, Updike once called the Sixties "a slum of a decade", and his ode to the Sixties is kind of a slum of a novel. Too bad.
Rating:
Summary: Weak but not a total loss
Review: Having moments ago finished reading "Rabbit Redux", my immediate impression is of a highly flawed book that, just barely, saves itself in the end by bringing the two most interesting characters in the series back together. Rabbit IS a rabbit, he twitches his nose and moves wherever it tells him, and even when it takes him through a Disneyland of unbelievably cliched characters like Jill and Skeeter (a deadened teenaged runaway and psychotic black veteran, respectively, who Rabbit takes into his house when his wife leaves him) it's at least worthwhile to follow. Janice, his estranged wife, is generally undeveloped because Updike spends so much more time on Rabbit, but when she enters the book in any form she attracts attention. I hope Updike gives her more "page time" in the next two novels, she deserves it.
What Updike seems to be trying to do is create a condensed Sixties in this book, particularly the middle section: we have the Conservative (Rabbit), who has a lot to learn, we have the radical (Skeeter), who has been driven insane through oppression and needs to vent, we have the searching hippie (Jill), who needs love and understanding because the world has let her down, and we have the child (Nelson), who could go in any of three directions. There's a love-in, a be-in, a history lesson, a fight or two, and a trip through the countryside to see how the nation is faring. And it ends in conflagration, as the real Sixties did; substitute a burning house for Altamont, and there you have it. The problem is, Updike once called the Sixties "a slum of a decade", and his ode to the Sixties is kind of a slum of a novel. Too bad.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Active of the 4 Rabbit Books
Review: Here's the Rabbit book with the most in-your-face action of the four. It's a product of the self-conscious 70's and does a lot of stuff with blacks and hippies, AND is as depressing as "Easy Rider." Rabbit Angstrom charts his course through these treacherous waters with his usual one-thing-at-a-time approach, and the result is a nihilistic conflagration. DANGER: Some of the reader's comments that follow mine give away WAY too much of the plot. If you don't like to spoil a good read, you are advised to proceed with caution.
Rating: 
Summary: Morbid
Review: I am reading the Rabbit series nearly in backwards order. I began with the third book, Rabbit Is Rich, and liked it so much that I picked up the book on Amazon that includes all four in the series. Curious about how it all ends, the next one I read was Rabbit At Rest, the final book. It is excellent, and the ending is very emotional and powerful. I then decided to read book 2, this one. Midway into it, I couldn't believe how bad it was. To put my reaction into a sort of context, I walked out of the movie Leaving Las Vegas, or whatever it was called, because it was simply too morbid for me. These sad sack addictive personalities drive me nuts. I can't sit there and watch them destroy themselves. I'd greatly prefer that they killed themselves quickly and left me alone. I do not enjoy wallowing in garbage. I do not sympathize with self destructive morons. I can't help them, and I don't want to suffer with them. This book features a weak young girl named Jill who allows herself to be destroyed by a nut case named Skeeter. Skeeter has some very valid points to make about American history, but he's not much of a house guest. I can't say I learned anything of value from Jill or Skeeter, so their sad sack story, their viciously morbid story, is pointless to me. Why suffer through it. Rabbit just lets things happen to him and to the people around him. For a few moments he wakes up and exerts himself. He objects to Jill turning his son into a lying beggar on the street, and he goes so far as to smack her around. Then why doesn't he object to Skeeter turning Jill into a pathetic junkie? That seems quite a bit more serious. What is wrong with this idiot? Another problem in the book is that Rabbit's wife Janice leaves her lover at the end, for no reason I can see. Her reason seems to be that the author told her to, after making it clear that she loves him desperately. Judging from the more mature work, Rabbit At Rest, I thought John Updike was among the great writers of all time. Judging from this garbage, Rabbit Redux, I have modified my view. All I can do is shake my head and say to the author - what got into you?
Rating:
Summary: Morbid
Review: I am reading the Rabbit series nearly in backwards order. I began with the third book, Rabbit Is Rich, and liked it so much that I picked up the book on Amazon that includes all four in the series. Curious about how it all ends, the next one I read was Rabbit At Rest, the final book. It is excellent, and the ending is very emotional and powerful. I then decided to read book 2, this one. Midway into it, I couldn't believe how bad it was. To put my reaction into a sort of context, I walked out of the movie Leaving Las Vegas, or whatever it was called, because it was simply too morbid for me. These sad sack addictive personalities drive me nuts. I can't sit there and watch them destroy themselves. I'd greatly prefer that they killed themselves quickly and left me alone. I do not enjoy wallowing in garbage. I do not sympathize with self destructive morons. I can't help them, and I don't want to suffer with them. This book features a weak young girl named Jill who allows herself to be destroyed by a nut case named Skeeter. Skeeter has some very valid points to make about American history, but he's not much of a house guest. I can't say I learned anything of value from Jill or Skeeter, so their sad sack story, their viciously morbid story, is pointless to me. Why suffer through it. Rabbit just lets things happen to him and to the people around him. For a few moments he wakes up and exerts himself. He objects to Jill turning his son into a lying beggar on the street, and he goes so far as to smack her around. Then why doesn't he object to Skeeter turning Jill into a pathetic junkie? That seems quite a bit more serious. What is wrong with this idiot? Another problem in the book is that Rabbit's wife Janice leaves her lover at the end, for no reason I can see. Her reason seems to be that the author told her to, after making it clear that she loves him desperately. Judging from the more mature work, Rabbit At Rest, I thought John Updike was among the great writers of all time. Judging from this garbage, Rabbit Redux, I have modified my view. All I can do is shake my head and say to the author - what got into you?
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