Book 88: Rabbit at Rest
Written by John Updike
I’ve waited over a year to read the fourth and final novel in Updike’s Rabbit Tetralogy.1 Rabbit, Run, Rabbit Redux, and Rabbit Is Rich were all exceptional - some of my favorite books ever. It was Rabbit, Run that kindled my love for Updike, and since that first read a couple of years ago, I’ve read most of his fiction (luckily, there are a few more left to go). I waited this long to read Rabbit at Rest because I didn’t want to say goodbye to Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, one of the best characters in fiction. It didn’t disappoint. While sad at times to see Rabbit past his prime and facing his own mortality, the work remains as poignant and compelling as its predecessors.
Favorite Passages:
Your children’s losing battle with time seems even sadder than your own.
There is on her face a trace of a blush, a simper, a secret. If something does not soon happen to her, it will become a silly empty face. Innocence is just an early stage of stupidity.
Rabbit realized the world was not solid and benign, it was a shabby set of temporary arrangements rigged up for the time being, all for the sake of the money. You just passed through, and they milked you for what you were worth, mostly when you were young and gullible. If Kroll’s could go, the courthouse could go, the banks could go. When the money stopped, they could close down God Himself.
A related novella, Rabbit Remembered was published after but technically isn’t part of the series.