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    Rabbit, Run
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    Rabbit, Run
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    Rabbit, Run
    Audiobook12 hours

    Rabbit, Run

    Written by John Updike

    Narrated by Arthur Morey

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his-or any other-generation. Its hero is Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty-even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler's edge.


    From the Trade Paperback edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateDec 23, 2008
    ISBN9780739376348
    Unavailable
    Rabbit, Run
    Author

    John Updike

    John Updike was born in 1932, in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Harvard College in 1954, and spent a year in Oxford, England, at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, and since 1957 has lived in Massachusetts. He is the author of fifty-odd previous books, including twenty novels and numerous collections of short stories, poems, and criticism. His fiction has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Rosenthal Award, and the Howells Medal.

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    Reviews for Rabbit, Run

    3.5/5

    1,370 ratings64 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      This book came to me with warnings of its dark mood. Great, I thought. Right up my alley. And as I also like my books to be, it is not all about the plot.The story unfolds slowly, allowing time for a real sense of place and personality to develop. We hear the internal monologues of various characters and however superficial their actions seem, their rationalisations for them are not. Being able to marry the action with the persons justifications for it is quite a treat. And it is this, I think, that made me love reading this book.The plot itself does exist, and it involves Rabbit- a lanky ex-basketball high achiever, who is navigating his way around his young marriage. This is proving not as exciting for him as his heady days of sport. Rabbit is keen to explore and fulfill the needs of himself only, and has no qualms about making use of anyone who can assist his passage. He has a local church man willing to try to steer him on a more morally sound course, and his parents-in-law also care. His wife is struggling with alcohol and the stress of having a largely absent husband whilst caring for a toddler and being heavily pregnant. It is a sad state of affairs. The book ends with an incident, the result of which there is no coming back from. I look forward to reading the next installment.
    • 2/5
      Wow, I wanted to like this book, but sorry...too damn slow. And I am typically one that can handle book of this sort. I kept waiting for it to move along. Quit reading about half way through. I apologize, Mr. Updike. Enjoyed the prose and you are obviously a great writer, but the drag I cannot handle.
    • 4/5
      A very entertaining story about Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom's life, he has a wife that has trapped him into a relationship bearing a unplanned son, he's trying to cope with the demands that society puts on his life, but he withdraws from the situation and takes off running. The author John Updike writes so every word has its place, like making a jigsaw puzzle, every piece has its place like his words too form a explicit story line.
    • 2/5
      I couldn't get through the book. I felt like it was a chick lit book for men. It is about a basketball star leaving his wife and screwing a woman. None of the characters interested me.
    • 4/5
      Rabbit Angstrom is dissatisfied with his life, job, marriage and religion does not offer any consolation to him. I found the character of Rabbit, really no one else is much of a character in this book, compelling even though I disliked him.
    • 4/5
      Rabbit Angstrom is dissatisfied with his life, job, marriage and religion does not offer any consolation to him. I found the character of Rabbit, really no one else is much of a character in this book, compelling even though I disliked him.
    • 3/5
      Technically, I would give this 3.5-stars, if the half-star rating was possible.

      Wow. This story and its characters are tragic. So, so sad and lost. This was my first Updike and, initially, I was just going through the motions, reading words and turning pages. But, the last third of the story was grab you by the throat and make you pay attention good. I was skeptical about having this character arc through so many books and wondering how thin that stretch would be. By the end of Rabbit, Run enough was left unaddressed to make me want to read book two in the series. I felt that parts of the story were over-written and was doing a bit of eye-rolling at moments when Updike's descriptions were just too over the top.
    • 2/5
      Crystal prose about shattered people. An in depth exploration of a putz.
    • 5/5
      A very clear and unflinching look into the dark side of human nature. Rabbit and company suffer so we can hopefully avoid some of their mistakes. This is my first Updike book and I am thoroughly impressed.
    • 5/5
      A great book. The poetical and intensely speculative style brings you closer to the daily, raw reality of the characters, rather than being a distancing thing. The reading is very good.
    • 3/5
      Updike's language is as beautiful and complex as ever, his craft without reproach, of course, and I could not help but be enchanted despite the reprehensible nature of Rabbit Angstrom himself. I don't know that I can bring myself to read another of the Rabbit series. Rabbit is lost and wandering or his running and lost throughout the book, like a giant wrecking ball of a human being, completely bewildered by it.
    • 4/5
      This was a great book. It took a little getting used to, considering the subject matter and the setting, but by the halfway mark I was fully entranced with the story and absorbed in its details, reading fluidly and easily (due to Updike's great skill) towards its conclusion. The ending is a shocker and sets a mean tone to finish off the book. Additionally, the characters were believable and rang true to me. Furthermore, the introduction that I read regarding the book was great at making me understand the significance of this fine work and put it in perspective- it was by Updike itself.I originally read this for the Time's Top 100 Novels list- but I'm going to be finishing the series. This one was definitely worth it.4.25 stars!
    • 3/5
      Rabbit rent! begint als een roadmovie, of, zo je wil, als een variante op Kerouac's On the Road: de 26-jarige nietsnut Harry 'Rabbit' Angstr?m, in zijn jeugd een basketbalster, heeft genoeg van zijn huiselijk leven in een provincienest en vlucht weg van zijn zwangere vrouw en zoontje. Maar al enkele duizenden mijl en een half etmaal later keert hij terug naar zijn stad en trekt in bij een hoertje. Zijn schoonfamilie stuurt een dominee op hem af, die zeer geleidelijk op hem inpraat, en als zijn vrouw bevalt, - twee maand later -, gaat hij weer bij haar wonen. Maar daar blijft het niet bij, integendeel, wat volgt is ronduit dramatisch.Dit vroege werk van Updike bevat duidelijk nog enkele zwakke kanten,en de hoofdfiguur overtuigt me ook niet helemaal als "archetype van een Amerikaanse man-zonder-eigenschappen". Maar in de manier waarop Updike zijn verhaal opbouwt (met vooral een naar de keel grijpende ontknoping), en in het bijzonder in de genadeloze (maar tegelijk erg realistische) manier waarop hij verhoudingen tussen mensen (en dan vooral mannen en vrouwen) schetst, houdt hij je als lezer echt in de ban. Hij slaagt er zelfs in enige sympathie (of is het eerder empathie?) op te wekken voor zijn trieste personages.
    • 5/5
      This book came to me with warnings of its dark mood. Great, I thought. Right up my alley. And as I also like my books to be, it is not all about the plot.The story unfolds slowly, allowing time for a real sense of place and personality to develop. We hear the internal monologues of various characters and however superficial their actions seem, their rationalisations for them are not. Being able to marry the action with the persons justifications for it is quite a treat. And it is this, I think, that made me love reading this book.The plot itself does exist, and it involves Rabbit- a lanky ex-basketball high achiever, who is navigating his way around his young marriage. This is proving not as exciting for him as his heady days of sport. Rabbit is keen to explore and fulfill the needs of himself only, and has no qualms about making use of anyone who can assist his passage. He has a local church man willing to try to steer him on a more morally sound course, and his parents-in-law also care. His wife is struggling with alcohol and the stress of having a largely absent husband whilst caring for a toddler and being heavily pregnant. It is a sad state of affairs. The book ends with an incident, the result of which there is no coming back from. I look forward to reading the next installment.
    • 4/5
      Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom was once the star of the basketball team. Now he is the "old guy", married to a wife with an alcohol problem, and just wanting to escape. He attempts to drive to Florida but ends up turning around, driving to his old coach's home who introduces him to a woman that leads him down the wrong path. While I can appreciate that this book is well-written and that it holds literary merit, it is not one that I find particularly enjoyable. It's a book that is read more for the characters and situations in which they find themselves than for a "good feeling" that one might get from reading another work of literature. It shows the consequences of poor decisions -- his own decisions, those of his wife, those of his coach, etc.
    • 3/5
      Some really great writing, simple yet profound, but I found Mr. Rabbit Angstrom puzzling always seeming to do the wrong thing, but fairly sympathetic also. Not a lot of action the plot veers in different directions but leads finally to a tragic ending with heart rending consequences.
    • 4/5
      Very sixties. I could feel the influence of the Rat Pack, Martinis and Bee-Hive Hairdos. Rabbit was a few years ahead of his time -- he should have joined a commune and left behind all worldly responsibilities. It would have been easy to do since he was incredibly irresponsible. Interestingly enough, I enjoyed the book despite the fact that I really didn't like Rabbit (what a royal jerk), but the writing was truly inspired at times. Some nice stream of consciousness stuff.
    • 5/5
      "Screw you, Janice. Just screw you."

      Oh the delights of Updike. Him and Bellow are just too good to be true. 'They're the tits!' as my nana used to say.

      You're not a true literary snob until you've read and loved this book.
    • 2/5
      The first 40 pages or so of this book are probably the worst 40 pages I've read since Austerlitz, which was so bad that I couldn't be bothered finishing it. Never before or since in the history of English language literature, or at least since Euphues, has an author so irritably reached after effect for no good reason.

      "The Norway maples exhale the smell of their sticky new buds and the broad living-room windows along Wilbur Street show beyond the silver patch of a television set the warm bulbs burning in kitchens, like fires at the backs of caves." Yes, this aptly likens modern living to pre-historic living. But trees do not exhale; what colour other than silver would a television set be in the '50s?; what sort of a bulb (or anything else, for that matter) burns any way other than warmly?

      "He had wondered what he was doing. But now these reflexes, shallowly scratched, are spent, and deeper instincts flood forward, telling him he is right. He feels freedom like oxygen everywhere around him... he adjusts his necktie with infinite attention, as if the little lines of this juncture of the Windsor knot, the collar of Tothero's shirt, and the base of his own throat were the arms of a star that will, when he is finished, extend outward to the rim of the universe. He is the Dalai Lama." Yes, this is faintly satirical. Yes, it's meant to show us the stupidity of Rabbit, and it does. But on the way it shows the incompetence of the narrator. What sort of a scratch is otherwise than shallow? Who 'feels' oxygen around them (air, maybe, but not unless it's particularly windy)? And clearly the simile at the end is *not* in Rabbit's head, so we can only blame Updike for seeing the universe in a tie-knot. Don't even get me started on the gobsmackingly ugly use of alliteration and assonance: scratched are spent; flood forward; feels freedom; infinite attention; little lines; will when he is finished; extend outward. That's in *half a paragraph*. And approximately 50% of the book is written in this 'style.'

      And you'll be able to find your own examples, too. Here are some brief ones at random from page 86: "three long nicks, here, scratched in the wall, parallel". *Long* nicks? "the pork chops... cold as death, riding congealed grease" riding to where? what's wrong with 'sitting on'? "he takes clean Jockey pants, T-shirts and socks from a drawer" Do *you* keep your dirty underwear in your drawers? "the furniture, carpeting, wallpaper all seem darkly glazed with the murk filming his own face" Would they be transparently glazed with murk?

      Thankfully, in the other half, when Updike isn't meditating his way into ecstasy over misplaced adjectives, excessive adjectives, superfluous adverbs, reified adjectives, and pointless, uninformative lists ("on the bureau there is a square glass ashtray and a pair of fingernail scissors and a spool of white thread and a needle and some hairpins and a telephone book and a Baby Ben with luminous members and a recipe she never used torn from a magazine and a necklace made of sandalwood beads carved in Java he got her for Christmas") characters actually speak to each other and display the characteristics we generally associate with human beings.

      This is all the more difficult for me to cope with because the moral of the story - running away from your responsibilities is an awful thing to do and will have terrible consequences on those who care for you, and even those who don't really - needs to be said in novels more often than it is by good writers these days (and by 'these days' I mean the twentieth century). But it has to be said better than this, for goodness' sake. I really hope Rabbit, Redux has less rapture over the everyday. Please. Please.
    • 3/5
      This book is interesting & depressing all at the same time. Harry Angstrom, AKA Rabbit, is a washed up former star basketball player in a 2 bit mountain town in PA. He got his girlfriend, Janice, knocked up so they got married. Given that this story takes place in the I would guess early 1960's, I think that was the expected thing to do at the time. Anyway, she is now pregnant with their second child, they have a fight over her depression & drinking, & he leaves her for a former prostitute named Ruth. The adventures he has between these 2 women makes him a decidedly unlikable character, almost an anti-hero type. The end of the book is unsatisfying because it leaves you hanging. Of course, since this book is the first of a series of 4, I guess Updike did it that way so it would draw you into the second book, just to see what happens between Rabbit & his 2 "families".
    • 1/5
      I did not finish this book. I left it out in the rain, possibly on purpose. This was my second attempt to like Updike. It will be my last.
    • 5/5
      I'll come right out and say it - I rarely read general or literary fiction. I'm clearly into science fiction and fantasy. I only picked up the first of John Updike's Rabbit books because I was thoroughly intrigued after hearing this title was challenged or banned in some areas.

      I was pretty amazed. Unlike many books, this is written in present tense rather than past tense. It actually works here. The story revolves around Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a former high school basketball star now living a daily existence as part of the rat race. But he finds it hard to do after dreaming of his glory days.

      It's quite a tantalizing read that is hard to put down. There's sexual content here, but it's not gratuitous and adds to the tension in the text.
    • 4/5
      The story line is a familiar one used by many of the Classics. Boy and girl get married. Some years later, one of them feels trapped in the marriage and disappointed that there isn't more to life. Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, The Awakening - all are books that follow a similar plot. Rabbit, Run follows this theme, but with one major difference. Instead of the wife being trapped in a marriage, this time it is the husband, Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom. And unlike these other heroines, he doesn't swallow poison or throw himself in front of a train. Instead, he runs. Although Rabbit is rude, obnoxious, cocky, inconsiderate and he makes some despicable choices - like leaving his pregnant wife - he also represents youth and all the possibilities that we have when we are young. I found myself cheering him on, just wanting him to run away. Good story!
    • 4/5
      This is an excellent portrait of a young (twenties) man who is confused about his place in the world, as perhaps most young men are. He is trying to sort out his relationship with his wife, his child, his parents, and another woman. He doesn't have much awareness of how these people might feel, and focuses instead on his own feelings, which is not a great recipe for relationship success. Indeed, the running Rabbit ends up doing is running from all his relationships. The relationship which seems to offer most hope to Rabbit is the one he has with 'his' pastor, who loves Rabbit despite his obvious faults and sins. No one understands this love and even the pastor himself has doubts. Rabbit isn't an attractive person but we're drawn into his life with a sort of morbid fascination, not unlike the way we stare at car accidents and other human tragedies. Rabbit is a lousy husband, father, son, and lover. It's somewhat depressing to see myself in him, but that's the point, isn't it?I'll be putting the remainder of the "Rabbit" series on my 'to read' list to see how Updike allows Rabbit to change as he ages and/or matures. Is there any hope in the world? At this point the answer seems to be 'no'.
    • 3/5
      Rabbit rent! begint als een roadmovie, of, zo je wil, als een variante op Kerouac's On the Road: de 26-jarige nietsnut Harry 'Rabbit' Angström, in zijn jeugd een basketbalster, heeft genoeg van zijn huiselijk leven in een provincienest en vlucht weg van zijn zwangere vrouw en zoontje. Maar al enkele duizenden mijl en een half etmaal later keert hij terug naar zijn stad en trekt in bij een hoertje. Zijn schoonfamilie stuurt een dominee op hem af, die zeer geleidelijk op hem inpraat, en als zijn vrouw bevalt, - twee maand later -, gaat hij weer bij haar wonen. Maar daar blijft het niet bij, integendeel, wat volgt is ronduit dramatisch.Dit vroege werk van Updike bevat duidelijk nog enkele zwakke kanten,en de hoofdfiguur overtuigt me ook niet helemaal als "archetype van een Amerikaanse man-zonder-eigenschappen". Maar in de manier waarop Updike zijn verhaal opbouwt (met vooral een naar de keel grijpende ontknoping), en in het bijzonder in de genadeloze (maar tegelijk erg realistische) manier waarop hij verhoudingen tussen mensen (en dan vooral mannen en vrouwen) schetst, houdt hij je als lezer echt in de ban. Hij slaagt er zelfs in enige sympathie (of is het eerder empathie?) op te wekken voor zijn trieste personages.
    • 5/5
      This is a story of Harry Angstrom who was a good basketball player in high school and at the age of twenty four is married with a two year old kid and a pregnant wife. He works in a store selling kitchen utensils. One day he realises how dull his wife is and how boring his life has become and so he walks out of his house and drives clean across the state. What follows are a series of misadventures and inadequate steps taken to rectify them. The beauty of this book is that even though we realise that Harry nicknamed Rabbit is an utterly selfish and self centered not too bright person, we still sympathise with him. We get where he is coming from and his disappointments in life. We feel his restlessness and though his decisions are wrong we cannot bring ourselves to criticize him. This fact makes this book a classic and a hit. A five star read.
    • 4/5
      Ich habe den Roman auf deutsch gelesen und fand ihn streckenweise sehr ermüdend. Das kann aber an der Übersetzung liegen. Nun muss ich ihn doch noch im Original lesen um zu sehen, ob der Autor wirklich an manchen Stellen ganz ungewöhnlich und kaum genutzte Fremdwörter benutzt und auf grammatikalische Korrektheit verzichtet. Die Geschichte fand ich, vor allem wenn man die Zeit der Entstehung bedenkt, beeindruckend.
    • 4/5
      There are hundreds upon hundreds of classic literature novels I need to read, and the reaction I most hate to have when I read them is ambivalence. If they’re amazing, all’s good; if they suck then I can just rant about them and decry their status as icons. When you read the magnum opus of a man considered to be one of the 20th century’s greatest writers and your reaction is “Yeah, it was pretty good, I guess,” it’s not easy to review.Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is a 26-year-old husband, father to a toddler, with another baby on the way. In high school he was a basketball star, a hero, but you get the impression that the big fish in the little pond wasn’t quite talented enough to make it elsewhere, which is why he’s still stuck in his hometown in Pennsylvania working as a kitchen implement salesman. One night his growing anxiety and dissatisfaction with his life reaches breaking point, and he gets in his car and drives away. He finds himself drawn back, though, and the novel covers the next few months of his life as he deals with the consequences of his actions.I knew before reading this that Rabbit is widely considered one of the most unlikeable protagonists in fiction, and I have to say, I don’t see why. He’s certainly not likeable – he can be self-centred, obnoxious, narcissistic and demanding, not to mention the cowardice of abandoning his wife and child. But the entire point of the book is about human flaws, particularly the flaws of youth – feeling trapped, knowing there could be more out there, wanting to avoid responsibility and run away (though I did find it odd that Rabbit immediately shacks up with another woman). So while he’s not likeable, I didn’t find him unlikeable, either, and I certainly found him sympathetic. I’m actually hard-pressed to think of a fictional protagonist I 100% dislike – or a real-life person, for that matter. Maybe I’m a nice person. Or maybe I’m easily influenced and will throw my sympathies behind whoever the narrator happens to be. David Lurie in J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace is also, apparently, a widely disliked figure, but I had no problem sympathising with him. Maybe I’m more capable of analysing a character’s actions and sympathising with their motives than other readers; maybe I’m mature enough to understand why people do things without necessarily condoning them. Or maybe that’s a very condescending thing to say and I’m a narcissist like Rabbit. Who knows? What a world!Rabbit, Run also feels like a happier book than it should be. Some terrible, terrible things occur – above and beyond what Rabbit does at the beginning – yet Updike’s prose has a way of making every single thing in the universe seem beautiful, from the trees to the flowers down to the clock ticking in a waiting room at a hospital. You know how sometimes you go through your day and feel blah, and other times you’re walking down the street and every puddle, street sign and strange odour seems wonderful and make you happy to be alive? Updike writes a world of the latter, even if it does send him into purple prose territory at times.I wasn’t blown away by Rabbit, Run the way I was hoping to be, but I did appreciate it and I do think it’s a strong novel that deserves its place in the canon. I’ll be reading Rabbit Redux down the track.
    • 2/5
      This is another book I probably read too young, even though it's the first of Updike's Rabbit series. I think I read it because I thought Updike was cute (and he was!) I have to admit that I haven't been motivated to read any of the others. Maybe it's part of that "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus" thing, but so many of the books by American male writers in the last 30-40 years sound deadly dull when I read the reviews. I'm thinking of Richard Ford, Philip Roth and others. Is it just because I can't relate? Or are they just being badly reviewed (even when being praised) and I should read them anyway? Well, maybe this Guardian project will get me to do so.
    • 3/5
      Book Circle Reads 96Rating: 2.5* of fiveThe Book Description: Penguin's bumf--Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his — or any other — generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is twenty-six years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty — even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path, an invisible line toward his own salvation as straight as a ruler’s edge.Ballantine's is a little better--To millions of Americans, Rabbit Angstrom is like a member of the family. They have followed him through RABBIT, RUN, RABBIT REDUX and RABBIT IS RICH. We meet him for the first time in this novel, when he is 22, and a salesman in the local department store. Married to the second best sweetheart of his high school years, he is the father of a preschool son and husband to an alcoholic wife. The unrelieved squalor and tragedy of their lives remind us that there are such people, and that salvation, after all, is a personal undertaking.My Review: I suspect my hostility to this book stems from a lack of respect for Rabbit Angstrom. I knew guys like this, I could have been a guy like this, and I think reading this book held up too undistorted a mirror to the facets of my own psyche that I dislike the most for me to enjoy the book as a leisure read.So now let me get at why I gave it such a low rating: I think Updike's writing is mediocre. I think he's gotten heaps of praise for being unsparing and a brilliant observer, both of which are undeniable, and then the flat-surfaced all-nuance-low-impact writing style in this book got a pass. It's BORING. The story infuriates me, yes, my issue there; but the way it's told...! Blahblahblahblah even in the most tragic moments. Like the Peanuts cartoon adults, the entire cast of the tale seem to honk and blatt, and nothing makes one sit up and take much notice of any one of them.Flat flat flat. Untoasted white bread spread with Miracle Whip, topped with limp outer leaves of iceberg lettuce and slices of weak-kneed, pale-pink winter tomatoes, with one piece of undrained, undercooked bacon in the middle.