Rating: 
Summary: RABBIT REDUX GAVE ME MIGRAINES!!!!!
Review: John Updike's Rabbit Redux was sadly dissapointing. Though it is fast paced and an often exciting read, it does not accurately portray "Middle America" as the book cover proclaims. Affairs, drugs, criminals, a runaway girl --this book has it all, except an ending that's believable. One comes away from this book with less faith in morality, and a sad outlook on the institution of marriage. Indeed the character "Rabbit" and his wife "Janice" never seem to rise above their stupidity, which,of course, is what we're waiting for them to do. I can forgive Updike since this was written in the '70's, but it's awful
Rating: 
Summary: One of my all-time favs
Review: Rabbit Redux was my first (of seven) Updike reads. I read it back in 1988 and have been addicted to Updike since. This one, in particular, struck a number of chords. First, it deals with emotions I've experienced: issues of sexual infidelity, anger, and dispair. On a second level, Updike deals with racial and religious issues. A year or so after I read this book, I read an analysis of Updike's symbolism in Rabbit Redux. Wow, did I miss a lot! One of these days I'll re-read it just to get that second rush of enlightenment. Some people say the Rabbit books need to be read in order. I didn't read them in sequence and had absolutely no problem.
Rating:
Summary: A slightly disappointing sequel
Review: Rabbit, Run is a taut,compelling,powerful tale of smalltown domestic crisis. Unfortunately,Rabbit Redux seems a bit overwritten, and lacks a strong payoff. While Updike gives unique insight into Middle America circa 1969, (it seems to me, in fact, to be as much a novel "of its time" as any I've ever read), it appears that he inserts his own spiritual musings into the character's dialogue a few times too often, in a way that seems forced. Though most of his work is theologically themed to a certain degree,the religious references usually come off as essential. Not the case with this book. I didn't feel like I was being preached at, because I never knew quite where the author stood morally, but I started resenting being constantly led down a philosophical road when I was simply trying to follow the story. It's interesting to revisit these characters and see how guilt shapes them over a decade, but it seems that we want Harry and Janice to become better with each other and at life in general, and they somehow don't. If there was a good excuse for their failure to take charge of themselves and their family, that would be one thing, but I think what Updike misses here is a clear explanation of why he has ultimately painted, amongst a backdrop dripping with colorful 1960's politics, a bunch of losers.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting follow-up to Rabbit Run
Review: Ten Years after the original novel we meet Rabbit Angstrom and crew once again. The year is 1969. Men are on the moon. Nixon is now president. 2001: A Space Oddessy is playing at the local theatre. Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is now 36 years old complete with paunch. Hardly anyone calls him Rabbit these days. Fewer know him as that once great high school basketball player.Rabbit now works with his own father as a printer. His sister is living out west or out east as a call girl. His mother is dying. His son wants a mini-bike. Rabbit's wife Janice is cheating on him. Any of these things would have made Rabbit run before, now none of these circumstances to seem to have any penatrating effect on rabbit. The book deals with some then contemporary issues in some very interesting ways. Updike's look at racism, flower children, teenagers, the old, the young, morality, and immorality are still fresh today. The book itself is every bit as good as the initial one.
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Summary: I shall return only in glory
Review: The line above is not spoken by Harry `Rabbit' Angstrom, but by another character named Skeeter in John Updike's follow-up to his "Rabbit, Run", "Rabbit Redux". Nevertheless, it perfectly fits the protagonist. In this second installment of the tetralogy, everybody's favorite rabbit is back in full glory, well, sort of. The sixties have arrived and it caught Rabbit and his family by surprise. There is a brand new moral being followed, and he, as good as any product of his time, is caught by it, in spite of still being very attached to the fifties' way of thinking. But everything is about to change. Janice, Rabbit's wife, leaves him for a Greek colleague, and his mother is sick and dying. To make matters worse, the protagonist takes a young girl to live with him --and replace his wife--, while his mind is clouded with the troubles of his time, like Vietnam War and the man landing on the Moon. But Rabbit's reeducation is about to begin. His new girlfriend brings along an African-American --but, of course, by that time nobody used this word-- called Skeeter who has some very extreme point of views. Actually most of what he thinks --if not everything -- is totally opposed to Rabbit's believes. Living in a constant fight these two men interact in such a way that will change both of them forever. "Rabbit Redux" --just like the previous "Rabbit, Run"-- is more than a novel about the education of a man. Actually it is like a huge painting about North America in that period. Full of pop culture references -- early in the Rabbit family goes to the cinema to see "2001 - An Spacey Odyssey", for instance-- the book shows the environment in which the sexual revolution spread in USA, among other things. It is interesting to see how Rabbit's beliefs are so wrong and how they change throughout the narrative. Just like in the first novel, John Updike is a gifted writer. Not only has he talent for developing characters in plausible situations, but he can also write sharp razor and witty dialogues. The words come to life from the paper when his creations are dialoguing. Another highlight of his writing is the eye he has for the times of change. The sixties were as crazy as he portrays in "Rabbit Redux". Those were time of radical change and the have a strong reflection in the Angstroms' lives. I believe that Updike's work shares some resemblances with Philip Roth's. Both are important critics of North American society, but if for the second the society transforms the family institution, for the first the family is a reflection of its times and social transformation. And these two different approaches are very interesting, and can only increase the reader's critical sense. All in all, Rabbit will again return in glory in the upcoming two novels, "Rabbit is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest". And I can wait to read and find out what will come next to my favorite American anti-hero.
Rating: 
Summary: An improvement from the first book in the series
Review: This book is a significant improvement over the first book in the series and a clear marker of the writer's development. He makes the protagonist, Rabbit (or Harry Angstrom) into a a true anti-hero, someone we really don't like, yet can't help caring what happens to him. Rabbit is 36 in this book and his son is 13. Still struggling with marriage, sex, family and himself, we see a new phase in his life's development. There are strong sexist and racist tones to the book, especially at the beginning, some of which are dealt with by the characters by the end, others which reflect the unfortunate but real attitudes of the times. The middle section of the book gets a bit bogged down in dialogues on political theory, but the rest is fresh and engaging. This book is the best of the three Updike books I've read so far.
Rating:
Summary: An improvement from the first book in the series
Review: This book is a significant improvement over the first book in the series and a clear marker of the writer's development. He makes the protagonist, Rabbit (or Harry Angstrom) into a a true anti-hero, someone we really don't like, yet can't help caring what happens to him. Rabbit is 36 in this book and his son is 13. Still struggling with marriage, sex, family and himself, we see a new phase in his life's development. There are strong sexist and racist tones to the book, especially at the beginning, some of which are dealt with by the characters by the end, others which reflect the unfortunate but real attitudes of the times. The middle section of the book gets a bit bogged down in dialogues on political theory, but the rest is fresh and engaging. This book is the best of the three Updike books I've read so far.
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Summary: My god, SO incredible
Review: This book is perhaps the most poignant of the series, but the entire series is so explicit and awesome, it leaves one searching for words. I LOVE this book. This is for every narcisistic teen who refuses to grow up, every young adult that thinks they missed out on the extremes in life, every mature adult trying to make meaning of it all. As vivid and profane as life, brilliantly paced in the mundanity of actual life, this was the book that cemented Rabbit's stance as an allegory of the baby boomer ideal, and eventual failure. Many other reviews here simply call the book 'sad' or 'depressing', but I fiind it genuinely uplifting, and noble in its search to find purpose in the mundanely suburban, cookie-cutter lifestlye that most of us life...this is a book for people who drink life in large gulps.
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Summary: Brilliant sylist who ultimately disrespects his characters.
Review: Updike continues to elicit, from me,a mixed reaction: on the one hand, he is clearly a spectacular stylist, with an incredible sensory encyclopedia of detail, a fine command of the language, and an ambition to reach out and capture the portrait of an entire social era. And yet, ultimately, he portrays these middle-class people with condescension. People who are, finally, just pathetic in their confusion, usually aimless and shallow and irresponsible. In the figure of Rabbit himself, Harry Angstrom, one experiences a largely passive, terribly irresponsible man who hardly realizes the moral dimensions of his experience. Married to a woman who is equally irresponsible in abandoning her child, equally shallow in equating sexual fulfillment and an encouragement of self-esteem from a man who is unwilling to make a marital commitment to her and has an affair with her own sister-in-law and then settles for her unsatisfactory marriage fatalistically. It's as if Updike sees these middle-class people as stupid and aimless and amoral, in an era - the sixties, which overwhelms them. And he meanwhile elevates their language to his own, giving them insights that are pointless to their lives as he sees them, and not realistically and respectfully a part of who they are. Here is a talented writer who chooses to write about a society of people he doesn't care about.
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Summary: The forgotten installment in the Rabbit series
Review: Updike does a nice job here of weaving together a period piece and a character-driven novel. I enjoyed this one more than its prequel, Rabbit Run. This one has more energy and better pace, though it does succumb to the occasional moment of introspective navel-gazing. The time is 1969, an exciting time for a country that is about to land on the moon but hasn't quite figured out how to play nice in the racially integrated sandbox. Updike adopts one of my least favorite writing techniques - using his characters to deliver long-winded speeches in order to convey a social or political message on behalf of the author. There are more subtle and graceful ways to do this, ways that don't make the reader feel like a brick has been dropped on his head. But fortunately these lectures are infrequent enough, and surrounded by otherwise wonderful writing. As for the character development, Updike brings his A-game. Harry Angstrom is your quintessential everyman, simple on the surface and complex underneath. His wife Janice is annoying beyond belief. And the new people who enter his life, Jill and Skeeter, possess more than enough spirit and grit to compensate for the fact that they are a bit stereotypical. While I still think the last two books in the Rabbit series are the best ones, Rabbit Redux is certainly worth reading. Updike is one of those rare writers who can get to heart of both society and human existence.
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