Awards
1991 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Howells Medal, and the National Book Critics Circle Award
In John Updike’s fourth and final novel about Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, the hero has acquired a Florida condo, a second grandchild, and a troubled, overworked heart. His son, Nelson, is behaving erratically; his daughter-in-law, Pru, is sending him mixed signals; and his wife, Janice, decides in midlife to return to the world of work. As, through the year of 1989, Reagan’s debt-ridden, AIDS-plagued America yields to that of the first George Bush, Rabbit explores the bleak terrain of late middle age, looking for reasons to live and opportunities to make peace with a remorselessly accumulating past.
Review
"Brilliant....It must be read. It is the best novel about America to come out of America for a very, very long time." The Washington Post Book World
Review
"Powerful....John Updike with his precisian's prose and his intimately attentive yet cold eye is a master." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"The most authoritative and most magical portrait yet written of the past four decades of American life." Time
Review
"Updike is razor-sharp and mordantly funny....If this novel is in some respects an elegy to Rabbit's bewildered existence, it is also a poignant, humorous, instructive guidebook to the aborted American dream." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Despite some flaws...the novel measures up well against the rest of the series. This is the saddest and deepest of the 'Rabbit' novels, an aching portrait of America at the end of the Reagan era." Library Journal
Review
"Rabbit at Rest is certainly the most brooding, the most demanding, the most concentrated of John Updike's longer novels....[M]eticulously recorded by one of our most gifted American realists." Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Times
Synopsis
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER - One of the most gifted American writers of the twentieth century brings back ex-basketball player Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, the late middle-aged hero of Rabbit, Run, who has acquired heart trouble, a Florida condo, and a second grandchild, and is looking for reasons to live.
"Brilliant . . . the best novel about America to come out of America for a very, very long time."--The Washington Post Book World Rabbit's son, Nelson, is behaving erratically; his daughter-in-law, Pru, is sending out mixed signals; and his wife, Janice, decides in midlife to become a working girl. As, through the winter, spring, and summer of 1989, Reagan's debt-ridden, AIDS-plagued America yields to that of George Bush, Rabbit explores the bleak terrain of late middle age, looking for reasons to live. The geographical locale is divided between Brewer, in southestern Pennyslvania, and Deleon, in southwestern Florida.
About the Author
John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. His novels have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Howell's Medal.