I'm a catch and any woman would be lucky to have me. a regular swell, the cats pyjamas sewn up around the bees knees. Nowadays she's so busy looking after the kid she's not interested in me (ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME), not like she should be. Janice drinks, man oh man she drinks and she can be a misery. Maybe I'm just not ready to be tied down. So I had this girl since high school, Janice Springer, and I knocked her up and well, damn it, I'm a fan of the idea of domesticity so I made an honest woman of her and her old man hooked us up with an OK place to live and all and no one was too suspect when little Nelson was born 7 months after the wedding. Some might say I also have a tendency to bounce from thing to thing without really thinking about it. The name is totally applicable in two ways - in high school basket ball games (I was a sporting ace don'tcha know?) a rabbit is a runner who sets the pace, and since leaving high school I appear to be breeding in a way which is prolific and almost rabbit like too. Hello everyone, I'm Harry Angstrom, but you can call me 'Rabbit'. The review will now proceed in the style of Harry 'Rabbit' Angstrom.

This is yet another book from the 1001 books list which has made me question whether or not the people who write the list actually like people who read books or if they are really secretly intent on torturing us all for their own amusement? I'm sorry I think I might have to pause before the start of this review and scream discretely into a pillow:ĪAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! And the trick is that it was right in front of you all along.īrilliant book, and I'd planned to read the other Rabbit novels, but I honestly detested him so much that I don't know if I'll have the stomach for another one in the near future. Updike does a masterful job of tricking you into initially liking Rabbit, even after he leaves his pregnant wife and son and takes up with a sorta-prostitute, but then slowly showing you Rabbit's true nature. It's obvious that Rabbit isn't meant to be a hero, or even an anti-hero.

I was completely unprepared for this spoiled, impulsive, selfish guy who really only cares about himself and his whims and manages to completely destroy almost everyone around him and still refuses to accept any responsibility for it. I'd had a vague idea that this story was about a former hot shot basketball player struggling to adjust to a regular life. This is the first book by Updike I've read, and his reputation as a writer was well-earned. God, do I hate Rabbit Angstrom! How much do I hate him? If I was in a room with Hannibal Lector, the Judge from Blood Meridian, the Joker from Batman, and Rabbit Angstrom, and someone handed me a gun with only 3 bullets, I'd shoot Rabbit three times.

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