Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, John Updike's monumental "everyman" creation has reached middle age, and we find him ten years after the previous book comfortably ensconced in his mother-in-law's home, running Springer Motors for her and Janice, and actually in love with his wife at last.The Angstroms have achieved the American dream and are even the center of their own little clique at a country club established for the nouveau riche.If you remember the Carter era, gas shortages, Cheryl Ladd replacing Farrah Fawcett in "Charlie's Angels" and Toyota's "Oh, what a feeling!" commercials, you will love this look back at America in 1979 and into the early 80's.
A fatter, richer Rabbit dabbles in gold and silver, plays golf, and wages war with his son Nelson, now a student at Kent State.When Nelson drops out of college and returns home, Rabbit says, "I like having Nelson in the house.It's great to have an enemy.Sharpens your senses."Nelson is the worst of Rabbit, scared and running, torn between two women, impregnating and marrying one while too young to handle the responsibility, and taking off.
Rabbit, though outwardly-satisfied and enjoying his affluent life, has never ceased mourning for what he cannot have. A young girl who enters his Toyota dealership reminds him so much of himself and Ruth, his lover from RABBIT, RUN, that he is convinced she is the daughter he never knew and is restless until he can confront Ruth about her.Janice, on the other hand, has matured into a suburban wife, playing tennis and lolling about the country club pool and in general convincing Rabbit to admit that the decade past has taught her more than it has taught him.
The secondary characters in this installment are brilliant.We see Charlie Stavros progressing into old age and running off to Florida with a young girl, but it is the Angstroms country club friends who provide the most decadent insight into the times as a group trip to the Caribbean becomes an adventure in wife-swapping and brings Rabbit nearer his dream of possessing the wife of his good buddy.
Rabbit himself neatly sums up his existence when he says "At my age if you carried all the misery you've seen on your back you'd never get up in the morning."But get up he does, to strut another day at Springer Motors, to chase one more woman, to fight one more battle with Nelson, and in the final page to possess his heart's desire----but I'll leave that up you, good reader, to discover on your own what that desire is.
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