Rabbit Redux

Rating:
Summary: The Further Adventures of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom
Review: When I finished "Rabbit, Run" I was so engrossed in the life of Harry Angstrom I could hardly wait to begin this one. He remains the perfect anti-hero, not very likeable yet someone the reader cannot help pulling for. This book takes up 10 years after the first, and if you are expecting Rabbit to have straightened up and be living a good life, you will be sorely disappointed.

He is living the humdrum existence of a printer, sharing drinks with his dad after work, watching his wife leave and begin an affair with a co-worker, and generally letting life come at him without showing much emotion or spunk. His sister Mim, now a California call girl, quite succinctly tells him, "Everybody else has a life they try to fence in with some rules. You just do what you feel like and then when it blows up or runs down you sit there and pout."

Rabbit loses most everything possible in this book---wife, home, job, lover---but seems complacent as ever and does not noticeably grieve. If fact, he seems quite content to be curled up in his parent's home, eating peanut butter sandwiches, and wearing his old high school letterman's jacket.

The book incorporates the real-life events of the time---the VietNam War, Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon, the racial riots that swept across America---and makes strong political and racial statements. However, this is the part of the book that dragged due to the verbosity of Skeeter, the angry black character who insinuates himself into Rabbit's life. Also present is Jill, an eighteen-year-old hippie who has run away from her wealthy parents and becomes daughter/lover to Rabbit.

As in "Rabbit, Run," a bizarre tragedy occurs three-quarters into the book. Rabbit, however, emerges relatively unscathed and plods along in his everyman's life.

Ruth and Jack Eccles make cameo appearances and there is a more in-depth look at Rabbit's parents, his sister, and Nelson. This is a great character-driven novel as the aimless and almost pathetic Rabbit moves through middle age. With all lost at novel's end, he has nowhere to go but up. Therefore, I am definitely looking forward to the next installment in this tetralogy.