Rabbit Is Rich

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Rabbit Is Rich

By: John Updike

Narrated by: William Hope

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About this listen

It's 1979, and Rabbit is no longer running. He's walking and beginning to get out of breath. That's okay, though - it gives him the chance to enjoy the wealth that comes with middle age. It's all in place: he's chief sales representative and co-owner of Springer motors; his wife, at home or in the club, is keeping trim; he wears good suits; and the cash is pouring in.

So why is it that he finds it so hard to accept the way that things have turned out? And why, when he looks at his family, is he haunted by regrets about all those lives he'll never live?

John Updike was born in 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania. He attended Shillington High School, Harvard College and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford, where he spent a year on a Knox Fellowship. From 1955 to 1957 he was a member of the staff of The New Yorker, to which he contributed numerous poems, short stories, essays and book reviews. After 1957 he lived in Massachusetts until his death.

John Updike's first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, was published in 1959. It was followed by Rabbit, Run, the first volume of what have become known as the Rabbit books. Rabbit Is Rich (1981) and Rabbit at Rest (1990) were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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Critic reviews

"Unquestionably Updike’s finest novel.... Funny and sharp and damnably intelligent.” ( The Boston Globe)

“Dazzlingly reaffirms Updike’s place as master chronicler of the spiritual maladies and very earthly pleasures of the Middle-American male.” ( Vogue)

“Rich, funny.... Updike at the very height of his powers.” ( New York Magazine)

Most relevant

Perhaps my favourite of the four. The humour is spot on, the writing is beautiful, the developments in Rabbit's life unexpected. Loved it. Narration still top-notch.

Best of the quartet?

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