Rabbit Redux - John Updike

Rabbit Redux - John Updike ... tantalizing detail by master novelist John Updike in this wise, witty, sexy story. Harry Angstrom -- known to all as Rabbit, one of America's most famous literary characters -- finds his dreary life shattered by the infidelity of his wife, Janice. How he resolves -- or further complicates -- his problems, makes for a novel of the first order. Rabbit Redux finds the former high-school basketball star working a dead-end job and approaching middle age in the downtrodden and fictional city of Brewer, Pennsylvania, the city of his birth. When his wife leaves him for another man, Harry and his twelve-year-old son are at a loss, and the chaotic state of the nation circa 1969 finds its way into Harry's home. Updike's recurring themes of guilt, sex, and death are joined here by racism, as Harry plays host to an African-American named Skeeter, a cynical, drug-dealing Vietnam vet who engages Harry in debates about the war and race relations. A wealthy white teenager fleeing suburban Connecticut, Jill, enthralls Harry and his son, and the four of them make a scandalous household emblematic of the Summer of Love's most confusing implications, culminating in a house fire that kills Jill. Harry and Janice are finally reconciled at book's end.