Some locals recognized themselves in the book, and the Updike family decided to spend the next year in London. It also puts sex where it belongs: at the center of all our discussions.The plaque, which was mounted next to the Caldwell Building entrance that Updike took to reach his second-floor office, reads: “From 1960 to 1974, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike had an office in the Caldwell Building, where he wrote many acclaimed literary works, including ‘A&P,’ Bech: A Book, The Centaur, Couples, ‘Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,’ Midpoint, A Month of Sundays, Of the Farm and Rabbit Redux.”Ĭouples, a 1968 novel, caused a stir in Ipswich because of its scandalous content: wife swapping. In this way the novel speaks to our present ideological divides: it undermines complacency, softens rigidity and blasts self-righteousness. If the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement divided society then, the novel shows how people came to hold such opposing views, how they abandoned them, and how they wavered. Mim, Harry's sister who works as a high-end prostitute, arrives in Section IV as an unlikely deus ex machina.Īdrift between a world that is dying and a world that is struggling to be born, Harry is a living portrait of Middle America at the time of the moon landing. The combination, fired by racism, proves to be combustive. Her friend, a young black radical, Skeeter, took refuge with them in Section III. In Section II, after Janice left, Rabbit took up with Jill, a young white hippie who rejected her rich family. In Section I, they are mom who is suffering from Parkinson's, and dad who is constantly reminding Harry to visit his dying mother.

Each section of the book focuses on the people he feels responsible for. Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom is a man who feels responsible for the world but helpless to do anything for himself, let alone the world. It opens with a wife walking out on her husband, and closes with the probability of them getting back together again. The structure of the book is elegantly simple. From its nuanced understanding of men and women, particularly men, but also women, what they want, what they fear, what they fear to want. From its beguiling historical detail and allegorical meaning. From the precise beauty of its descriptions. My first Updike, and I exploded with pure pleasure.

Rabbit Redux by John Updike