The first book in John Updike’s award-winning ‘Rabbit’ series, with an afterword by the author
It’s 1959 and Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom, one time high school sports superstar, is going nowhere. At twenty-six he is trapped in a second-rate existence – stuck with a fragile, alcoholic wife, a house full of overflowing ashtrays and discarded glasses, a young son and a futile job. With no way to fix things, he resolves to flee from his family and his home in Pennsylvania, beginning a thousand-mile journey that he hopes will free him from his mediocre life. Because, as he knows only too well, ‘after you’ve been first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate’.
‘It is sexy, in bad taste, violent and basically cynical. And good luck to it’
Angus Wilson, Observer
‘That special polish, that brilliance; Updike is among the best’
Malcolm Bradbury
‘Brilliant and poignant … By his compassion, clarity of insight, and crystal-bright rose, [Updike] makes Rabbit’s sorrow his and our own’
Washington Post
