This book is a collection of some of the best-preserved, non-Irish Celtic stories, which makes it a valuable resource for anyone studying Celtic literature and culture. Not only that, but the stories are wonderful! The Guide to Welsh Pronounciation was excellent, making it easier to read names like Blodeuwedd or Yspaddaden.

To be honest, this reviewer who studied classic literature in several college classes never heard of this Welsh anthology collected during the fourteenth century. The book contains eleven tales translated into English short stories that link Welsh myths and medieval life in Wales with a world of fantasy. Fans of King Arthur (who appears in several tales) or Beowulf will fully enjoy the tales that divide into three sections with each one very colorful while providing the life of a bygone era by bards of a later but also bygone period. Different, but quite good for readers who enjoy Celtic legends. THE MABINOGION will definitely entertain this select audience.

Harriet Klausner

This book is absolutely necessary if you want to learn more about the Welsh through literature. Writers like J.R.R. Tolkien and Lloyd Alexander have drawn inspiration from this ancient classic. With this translation and edition, you also get some of the oldest Arthurian Romances. Order it now!

The idea of "the best of the Oxford American" brings out a lot of expectations. This magazine has been the home for a lot of special writing. This book provides some of those moments. I especially enjoyed the narrative of the small town photographer burdened by the unwelcome insights of his coworkers and the blank misunderstandings of his Disney World roadtripping friends. I think that the criticism by Tony Earley would have made just as good an introduction to this book as did Rick Bragg's more metaphorical observation that this writing is "heavy on the salt."
I would recommend this book for anyone that wants to read about the South as it actually is -- unique, history-addled, and genuinely "salty".

This collection of works--fiction, nonfiction, poetry, reportage--by the biggest names writing in or about the South is a real treasure. For those already familiar with "the New Yorker of the South" it will remind those what have made the magazine so special for so many years, and for those who have not discovered the magazine, BOA will be a great introduction to the best in Southern belles lettres. The book, like the magazine itself, is a little trad and not good on commenting on the lives of blacks, gays/lesbians, and immigrants to the South, but there is much for everyone to enjoy here.

This is a well-informed volume with a few strong chapters but also significant weaknesses. James Schiff is devoted to Updike's work and in particular offers vigorous appreciations of recent works of Updike - particularly notable is his strong defense of *Brazil*, which has been critically lambasted. Also noteworthy is a lengthy discussion (12 pages) of *In the Beauty of the Lilies*, which is one of the best things in the book, and a final chapter that evaluates Updike's accomplishment as a critic. Unfortunately, the interest of the volume is limited by Schiff's rather pedestrian belaboring of the obvious and a non-Updikean conception of artistic work that naively and unreliably judges works to be either "successes" or "failures." If the author were less preoccupied with arguing whether a work succeeds or fails and studied in detail some of the qualities of diction, syntax, and metaphor that make almost every page of Updike's prose (and poetry - unfortunately not treated here, despite the recent publication of Updike's *Collected Poems, 1953-1993*) a marvel, the volume would be of greater value to readers. Other flaws: the author underestimates Updike's cosmopolitanism, seems to lack the necessary subtlety to appreciate Updike's philosophical and religious themes, and fails to appreciate the degree to which Updike's embrace of an ethic of *craftsmanship* binds together the disparate aspects of Updike's oeuvre. Chapter 5 shows signs of having been hastily reworked from an earlier volume of Schiff's on the '*Scarlet Letter* trilogy.' This reader finds the view that *The Witches of Eastwick* "may be Updike's finest novel" unconvincing - only a reader who finds the character of Freddy Thorne in *Couples* appealing could think so. The volume includes a useful selected bibliography of other volumes of criticism. Worth reading, but should not be considered to be among the best works on John Updike.

James Schiff's book on John Updike is the best I've read. Schiff seems to know everything about Updike, and his ability to discuss such a range of novels in so few pages is impressive. His chapter on Updike as a man of letters is a brilliant, well-researched, and eloquent argument for Updike's place as one of America's finest critics. In addition, he offers the finest criticism I've seen on The Poorhouse Fair, the Scarlet Letter novels, The Witches of Eastwick, Buchanan Dying, Memories of the Ford Administration, Brazil, and In the Beauty of the Lilies. His chapter on the Rabbit novels is also intelligent and articulate, one of the better summaries of that great multivolume achievement. All in all, Schiff's book is a must read for anyone interested in Updike.

How can anyone in 228 pages possibly get a genuine feel for Updike's huge oeuvre? Mr. James A. Schiff can and does by giving the Updike fan and student a nice rehashing of most all of his works to date. The author surpasses the seminal critical works by the Hamilton's, Elizabeth Tallent. Rachel Burchard, Robert Detweiler, and others I've read by including some critical reviews never before in print.

He begins by discussing and memorilizing family and community in THE POORHOUSE FAIR and THE CENTAUR. This gentleman critic from the University of Cincinnati looks at Rabbit Angstrom as an American icon and then thoroughly discusses the Rabbit teralogy. The marriage novels, COUPLES and THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK are taken together. In chapter five he discusses the much rehearsed Hawthorne trilogy of S., ROGER'S VERSION, and A MONTH OF SUNDAYS. A section on recreating American history is discussed in the rather obscure BUCHANAN DYING, MEMORIES OF THE FORD ADMINISTRATION, and Schiff recreates a renewed (or perhaps original) interest in IN THE BEAUTY OF THE LILIES in an unbiased review of perhaps Updike's "greatest work" according to Schiff.

A chapter on his short stories which a lot of people consider Updike's forte (a master of the small canvass) and even the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist's expertise as "the contemporary independent critic" are explored in his three and soon to be published fourth book on criticism not to mention his frequent stints as editor, Intro, and Preface writer. JOHN UPDIKE REVISITED is a thoughtful, knowledgeable, and highly readable book that must receive a five star--but of course I'm an Updike fan.

The five yarns in this book, loosely linked, are very engaging and captivating - even seductive. But in the end I hated them. It's just that the first person character is a male who takes liberties in his relationships and then bristles at suggested whiffs of engagement of his partner or partners with other people - even if the implied infidelity is far from established. I find it very hard not to identify the character with Edmund Wilson himself, and then it's so hard to avoid a real repugnance for the man and the hypocrisy displayed by his character.

I have met this feeling before with Paul Theroux, even in his travel stories which are openly autobiographical. I'm sure I could never expose my thinking in the way Mr Theroux does. But, on the other hand there are extenuating circumstances with Mr Theroux and he does recognise the unfairness of his attitude, even regrets it. This doesn't happen with Edmund Wilson's character who seems not to think that his self-centred behaviour should be questioned - he's a man and he can do whatever he wants - not so those who associate with him. His entreaties to the women he seduces seem so [weak] to me - and yet they are successful in the novel - 'You know you're the only woman I've ever wanted to marry!'

And inexcuseable (for me anyway), towards the end of the novel there are pages and pages in French. I understand that multilingual people do sometimes switch between languages but I think this is appalling behaviour by the writer and the publisher when many, if not most, readers will not be able to read these passages. What are we expected to do - go out and hire a translator to translate the text for us?

The stories are engaging, even amusing, perhaps enlightening. But in the end I just didn't like them for the arrogance of the character, the vulnerability of the women he associates with (none of them stand up against him), and the self-indulgence of the author.

On Christmas Day 2001 I was in San Francisco when I began reading this literary collection of six interrelated novelettes. I learned of the book while reading 'THE SCARLET PROFESSOR--Arvin Newton'. I was anxious to read it because the book was banned in 1947 because of its heatedly debated subject matter of descriptive sex, adultery, venereal disease and a mixture of the upper and lower class values of the time. My dear friend, Gloria Weiner-Freiman-Cohen, would surprise me with the gift of this book. While I was pleasantly surprised the author, Edmund Wilson, has encouraged me to write in my journal again as he did nightly in his 'Wilson's Night Thoughts'--(everyone has NIGHT THOUGHTS, right?). I'm sure that is an interesting book as well. This book is written in a very 'twenties style' of literary competence that I truly love. It just sweeps me back to the beauty of words that are often not used in this manner today. I liked the following lines from the book:
-Right is right and wrong is wrong and you have to choose between them!
-...it's the dead...that give life its price, its importance. You feel them under the ground just lying there and never moving.
-Every work of art is a trick by which the artist manipulates appearances so as to put over the illusion that experience has some sort of harmony and order and to make us forget that it's impossible to pluck billard-balls out of the air. ...he had been spurred by no need to make money.
-The only things that were fresh in the streets were the headlines--new words--on the newsstands, and most of these announced dismal events.
-They didn't worry about their social position because the life that an artist leads is outside all the social positions. The artist makes his own position, which is about the nearest thing you can get to being above the classes.
-He really needs somebody to hold his hand!
-...it was all on the kindergarten level.

Edmund Wilson is one of the great literary and social critics of the 20th century. This collection, largely forgotten in his voluminous interpretive texts, is a group of 6 interrelated stories which explore aspects of contemporary society (published in 1946). Wilson's keen analytical mind, gives these tales a penetrating, still relevant, perspective. The venue is upscale Hecate County, New York (Hecate is the Queen of Witches), built of marriages of form, and a social life of formalities. Passion, here, swirls in a cauldron of manners. The matriarchal community is dominated by a self involved, status-seeking, unsatisfied type of woman. These are stories of intrigue, even bewitchment, bound by strictures of guilt or conformity. Pathos mingles with humour and observation to produce a sharp relief of the cultural terrain. His methods include both biting satire and tantalizing insights of intimacy. The elliptical conversations provide a platform for far ranging, not so subtle social criticism. The women are weavers of charms. They form only a spectral presence in some of the stories, but are always a catalyst in the vaguely destructive relationships. In the most ambitious story, Princess With the Golden Hair, oblique sensual imagery imbues an erotic undertone; sexuality itself is portrayed in morally ambiguous, layered contradictions. Wilson is examining conventions which bind people in structures sapped of meaning, while confessing subliminally the need for standards-- and for love. In this way the book reflects both the mid century suburban angst and the more persistent predicaments of the heart.

Have you ever sat and thought, man, I wish someone would write a book about living? And possibly loving? Well, Henry Green has gone out and done just that. I had never thought that a book about going to parties might be necessary, but after reading it I think that Mr. Green has indeed performed a valuable service. This wonderful collection of novels is, quite frankly, a comprehensive exploration, and no new books need be written on any of these subjects.

In any case, the writing made my jaw drop in spots, it was so good, and Green way of looking at things is funny and humane while being mercilessly clear-eyed. The only reason I think they've stopped teaching his books in colleges is because they don't have the sort of things one can write papers about: complicated networks of imagery and whatnot that can be dug out of the text and have a title slapped on them. Green's book are too alive to have anything particularly systematic going on in them, while retaining the structure and unity of true works of art. Amazing books, go out and read them.

Party Going alone is worth the price of admission. Don't be put off by Green's style. He isn't flouting the rules of grammar for his own amusement; he isn't experimenting for no good reason. Give him a few pages and you'll learn to love the rhythms of his gloriously weird prose. There are passages here more beautiful than anything else I've read in 20th century English fiction. And he isn't just a stylist: all of his books are coupled by characters that are lovingly developed. They're interesting despite being completely ordinary. They think no deep thoughts; they do nothing that's especially sympathetic or noteworthy; they don't seem to be carrying any sort of symbolic weight. They're just normal people interacting with each other. The book doesn't even move according to anything that could be traditionally considered a "plot."

But somehow you never want to miss a word. These are books that you can read again and again and again without getting bored. I have no idea how Green does it. He's an absolute magician. Read Party Going and Loving, at the very least.

I have read both of the three-novel volumes published by Penguin, and while I think even the worst of these is at least good, LOVING shines out as one of the best novels that I have ever read. Set in Ireland during WW II and consisting almost entirely of dialogue (no narrative voice worth noting), it tells a poignant yet hopeful story of love in the upper and servant classes of a country castle and estate. The ending is one of the very best that I have encountered, rivaling my other favorite endings (BROTHERS KARAMOZOV, THE WHITE HOTEL, and POSSESSION).

I had serious reservations about the Modern Library list of the 100 Greatest English Novels of the 20th century, but I was delighted to see that they included LOVING.

LIVING is not as strong as the other two books, but PARTY GOING, while not the masterpiece that LOVING is, is nonetheless a very, very fine book indeed.

Rabbit, Run is a taut,compelling,powerful tale of smalltown domestic crisis. Unfortunately,Rabbit Redux seems a bit overwritten, and lacks a strong payoff. While Updike gives unique insight into Middle America circa 1969, (it seems to me, in fact, to be as much a novel "of its time" as any I've ever read), it appears that he inserts his own spiritual musings into the character's dialogue a few times too often, in a way that seems forced. Though most of his work is theologically themed to a certain degree,the religious references usually come off as essential. Not the case with this book. I didn't feel like I was being preached at, because I never knew quite where the author stood morally, but I started resenting being constantly led down a philosophical road when I was simply trying to follow the story. It's interesting to revisit these characters and see how guilt shapes them over a decade, but it seems that we want Harry and Janice to become better with each other and at life in general, and they somehow don't. If there was a good excuse for their failure to take charge of themselves and their family, that would be one thing, but I think what Updike misses here is a clear explanation of why he has ultimately painted, amongst a backdrop dripping with colorful 1960's politics, a bunch of losers.

I found Rabbit Redux to be the weakest book in the Rabbit tetrology, though by no means is it a weak book in and of itself. Rabbit Redux's plot takes a detour in the middle and never quite gets back on track, though the writing itself is just as masterful as that of Rabbit, Run. Updike is good with beginnings. In Rabbit, Run, the reader was hooked by the description of Harry heading south from Brewer, Pennsylvania on his first ill-planned quest. In the sequel, the family's conversation with Charlie Stavros in the first part of the book is an excellent mix of sharp dialogue and witty description. We can quickly see how far (or, as it were, NOT far) Rabbit has come since the first book, and it's interesting to watch his wife Janice and son Nelson change along with him. Rabbit Redux introduces a host of supporting characters. Charlie Stavros tends to be the most believable and familiar (with enough quirks to make him stand out in Updike's landscape of idiosyncratic people). Jill and Skeeter, Rabbit and Nelson's two houseguests in the book's middle, are more stereotypical than I would have hoped. Updike seems to descend a little too far into social commentary in the middle of the book as Jill the Poor-Little-Rich-Girl Hippie and Skeeter the Mysterious Black Man exact their influence on both Rabbit and Nelson. Rabbit Redux feels most a part of the Rabbit series when the two aforementioned characters are no longer in the book.

I think Rabbit Redux is a more accomplished book than Rabbit, Run, and a stronger novel. What looked new and experimental in Rabbit, Run (e.g. the present tense narration) seems in this novel more established - less self-conscious and posturing. The cast of characters also comes across as more solid. Rabbit's parents and his son, Nelson, are in particular well-realised - so that one gets a stronger sense here of Rabbit's role within a family than one did in the first novel. (Who, by the way, portrays adolescents as well as Updike?) And Rabbit Redux is also more of a social history than the more literary Rabbit, Run, faithfully reflecting the racial and political climate of 1960s America. I would read Rabbit, Run first, but I would certainly then recommend reading this one.

Updike has examined several couples and their relationships with each other, lots of sex and quite risque for being written in the late 1960s! I read a 1968 older copy. Fits in today's world, too! I have to admit that I HATE Piet, although he seems to be the "main" character. I hate how he just jumps from bed to bed to bed, although he finally makes the right decision. The book makes marriage seem like a dead end, although there are so many marriages that ARE like that! Maybe it's a chance to show us how we behave as humans, and maybe we can work on our relationships to keep the fire going and not turn out like his characters!

Something else that made me uncomfortable about Piet is his comparing one woman's body parts to another. Makes ya wonder if guys really do that -- of course it would have to be really promiscuous men! But I'm sure men DO compare ex-girlfriends' bodies to new girlfriends. It makes me feel self-conscious.

Updike does a good job in the book of pointing out our flaws and greatest fears in relationships, and showing beginnings and endings of relationships. It's a very intellectual study. Great book!

Updike's portrait of the upper middle class in a sleepy Boston suburb in 1968 when people actually had more time than they knew what to do with seems almost as distant and foreign to our overworked present as Fitzgerald's Jazz Age. Set on the eve of the sexual revolution, the novel explores a circle of couples who nearly devour each other out of jealousy, lust and boredom. Yet, the book is not without its tender sides, as Updike manages some hard-won sympathy for his protagonist Piet Hanema, the philandering grown boy of a man who does very bad things for very sad reasons. Richly-detailed with references of the time, COUPLES is a vivid snapshot of America, or at least one slice of it, in 1968.

Updike makes the reader feel like a voyeur privy to the most intimate acts and discussions in the characters' lives. We are transported to the fictional New England town of Tarbox in the 60's and introduced to its suburban inhabitants. They have cocktail parties and play tennis and basketball and raise children and discuss politics, consumerism, gossip, and sex. Yet beyond its Peyton Place scenario, the characters are truly complex, searching for answers, happiness, joy, excitement, anything!

Updike brilliantly blends literary prose and imagery with frank situations and absorbing dialogue to create a beautiful American portrait that is extraordinarily accurate. It satisifes the reader's quest for truth, drama, and philisophical stimulation.

I have read this novel 3 times and become completely imersed and enthralled each time.

"Gertrude and Claudius" is a historical fantasy loosely based on Shakespeare's "Hamlet". The novel is divided into three parts, between which the time period jumps, coming ever closer to the point at which Shakespeare's play begins. It could be viewed as Updike's attempt to do a prose prequel to "Hamlet".

In the Danish Court, Horwentil marries Gerutha. Horwentil becomes King of Denmark, but Gerutha becomes increasingly attracted to Horwentil's brother, Feng. As the reader progresses from one section of the book to the next, the character names Updike uses become more recognisably those in "Hamlet", and thus the story becomes more familiar.

"Gertrude and Claudius" is entertaining enough, without being a spectacularly good piece of fiction. Updike's prose is of variable quality, hence:

"She tipped up her face to remind him who she was, and he quizzically brushed the knuckles of one hand against her cheek, where his mail had gouged in red the gridded impression of its links."

Enough to turn any girl's head. In all, I prefer Updike when he remains at home - in the USA.

G Rodgers

Gertrude and Claudius as a novel is sheer entertainment. Given that everyone knows the Shakespeare Hamlet, with so many movie versions cropping up yearly, it is a pleasure to see a contemporary writer of the stature of Updike apply the bard's techniques of story telling to introduce the dysfunctional family Hamlet ultimately destroys. If Updike is tedious at the outset of this novel - who in their sane mind wants to wade through the mire of Danish myth/history replete with irritating name changes, period language, etc - once his tenor is set he takes us on a rather winsome journey of royalty, class, passion, adultery, murder and courtplotting that makes for a page-turner of a novel.

In the end, I think Updike's novel, for all its meanderings, gives us a broader vista of why Hamlet is so troubled when the curtain opens on Shakespeare's play. There are insights here worth pondering. This is a great little book for an evening's diversion.

Each of the three parts that make up "Gertrude and Claudius" begins: "The King was irate." In the first part, the statement refers to Gertrude's father Rorik; in the second, to Gertrude's husband Horvendile; in the last, to Gertrude's second husband Claudius. Gertrude is surrounded by kings.

In this manner Updike structures his story of Hamlet's mother's marriage, affair, and second marriage. It's a parents' view of the Hamlet problem. Comparisons will be made to "Brazil" and "The Coup," his other flights of imagination. "Gertrude and Claudius" reads better and faster, perhaps because it's a concise prequel to the Shakespeare play; from the first to the last page, we know what's coming.

I read it as a prose poem in which Updike's luminous sentences serve a legend instead of the familiar contemporary situations of his best novels. "Gertrude and Claudius" allows author and reader to enter a distant enticing word-world. I had to look up garderobe, houppelande, hesychast, cloisonne, and bliaut, just to name a few. We are treated to a ten-page treatise on falconry, the objective correlative to Gertrude's plight as a woman caged in cold dark paternal Denmark.

The plot is secondary to precision of language and depth of insight regarding romance, marriage, and children. Updike disdains all the cheap tricks and twists of novel writing, happy instead to apply his verbal wizardry to a ready-made narrative.

The language veers from verbatim and paraphrased Shakespeare to familiar Updikean metaphors, to colloquialisms like, "He had gotten away with it." The characters speak in Elizabethan English, in what I take to be translated elevated medieval or Renaissance Danish, and at other times like present-day guilty self-analyzing New England adulterers. Claudius even quotes Provencal poetry to woo his beloved.

Sometimes "Gertrude and Claudius" reminded me of the unconvincing parallel universe sections of Updike's previous (and otherwise excellent) novel, "Toward the End of Time." In that novel, the narrator forces himself to read a few pages of a difficult history book before bedtime.

I would recommend "Gertrude and Claudius" to all Updike fans. Let's face it, we're loyal freaks, even when it comes to his lesser works, which nevertheless surpass most hyped novels being published these days. If you are new to Updike, "Gertrude and Claudius" may not be the best book to start with, unless you like Shakespeare and want additional background on "Hamlet." Go with the Rabbit books or, if you like books about writers, the Bech books, or the short stories, which contain some of his best work. Still, you can't go wrong with any Updike copyrighted in this or the previous century.

Brazil tells the predictable story of Tristao and Isabel, the ill-fated lovers, and John Updike is an able writer with clean and polished prose. Unfortunately the book is full of quite a lot of nonsense, including some very poor dialogue, and combined with the hard-nose realistic style, the end result is rather frigid. But my chief complaint is this: When someone calls his book 'Brazil' it should be safe to assume that the author has something important and truthful to say about the country. Updike's Brazil is stale and stereotypical, and none of the characters are even remotely believable as Brazilians. He misses the most important point about Brazil althogether: Its people are warm, caring, both passionate and compassionate. None of this comes through. This book is really not worth reading.

This is an unusual novel by Updike, as it is not set in his usual territory of middle-class America. Instead, the scene is Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s. Two young people, Tristão and Isabel, meet on a beach and become lovers. Thereafter, the action takes them and the reader on a Brazilian odyssey - Rio, São Paulo, Brasilia and the Amazon hinterland are all covered as the lovers' relationship fluctuates and develops.

I thought that this was more of a fantasy than a serious and insightful novel about Brazil, and that it fell seriously short in quality when compared to some of Updike's more accomplished works. I was not convinced that Updike had good first-hand knowledge of the country, rather I felt that his knowledge might have been based on others' accounts. Perhaps realism was not the aim, but I couldn't get away from the "artificial" feel of the narrative - a fault Updike is not normally guilty of, although there are precedents ("The Coup").

At best, "Brazil" felt like a condensed version of one of James A Michener's sweeping historical novels, with sex added. Airport lounge reading only.

G Rodgers

Everyone knows and loves Updike. His own worst enemy is himself. In choosing to set his "Tristan and Isolde" love story in Brazil, the author has overextended himself. He simply doesn't know enough about Brazil, doesn't have that visceral sense of the country that would make this book a success. As a result, the characters often explain things at length in their dialogue that any Brazilian already knows. Thus, while the author strives for a sort of magical realist effect in fantastical dialogue and plotting, the words that come out of the characters' mouths are things that no Brazilian would ever say. Case in point: the poor favela-dwellers speak some bizarre inner-city U.S. ghetto lingo that just makes no sense in a Brazilian context.

The plot is straightforward and linear, black/white, racial tension. Nothing new there. The denouement is utterly predictable. When his own attention lags, the author tosses in a gratuitous sex scene. The sex, ostensibly designed to demonstrate the fiery heat of the lovers' passion, is a strange blend of tawdry and clinically kinky... it carries no heat. And frankly, by the twentieth sex scene, a reader can be forgiven for skipping ahead a few paragraphs to pick up the story again.

Despite the occasional pithy gem, ("Women and men occupy two different realms, and their mating is like the moment when a bird seizes a fish"), the regular attempts to stir in some profundity generally dissolve into mere banality. This is not a deep book, it was not carefully thought-through. It is just a linear tale. Even Updike is getting a little bored by the end, as he completes one of the final chapters: "Though this chapter covers the greatest stretch of time, let it be no longer than it is!" Bleary-eyed readers will agree with this sentiment.

In the book, Rabbit Run, Harry Angstrom runs away from his home. He runs away from an alcoholic wife, a simple job in the sales world, a young boy, and his soon to be daughter. Rabbit (Harry) is searching for his childhood life; he wants to go back to the days when he was the high school jock, and the star of the basketball team. Thinking that finding his old basketball coach will help him, he goes in search of Mr. Tothero. Tothero introduces him to a couple of friends, Margaret and Ruth, and by the end of the night Rabbit and Ruth become roommates. Rabbit seems to be happy until his wife, Janice, goes into labor and forces rabbit to leave Ruth and rush to the hospital. Throughout the rest of the book, Rabbit fights with the desire to return to Ruth, and the obligation he feels he has to Janice and their two children. The novel ends in such a dramatic way that you can't wait to begin reading the second book in the series.
John Updike did a terrific job in creating the realistic fictional novel. The novel was easy to read, and just interesting enough to keep you into it. Updike uses simple vocabulary and his sentence structure is easy to follow. At some points the plot and descriptions John Updike chose were weak and a little dry, but overall the book was enjoyable. Hooray for Updike!

Literature can't get better than this. John Updike is one of my favorite authors and Rabbit, Run is one of my favorite novels of all time. The first page is the most mesmerizing I've ever encountered, it snakes a hand gently around your throat and squeezes. When you come to, you have not only finished this book and its marvelous sequels, each deliciously darker than the last, you have devoured Couples, The Coup, The Centaur, Marry Me, The Witches of Eastwick, S., A Month of Sundays, In The Beauty of the Lillies, and everything else this man has written. You don't just read an Updike novel, you join a cult.

Harry Angstrom is delicious -- so deeply flawed, a black diamond. He is sexist but not unusually so -- he perfectly reflects our culture. And yet I don't consider Updike a man's writer, for women, too, could relate to his beautifully crafted work. I can't recommend this book enough. Read it!

John Updike's first in a series of "rabbit" novels is about a washed up high school basketball star that struggles to find success during his post-basketball crowning. Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom finds himself running from mostly everything - including his wife, child, job, and himself. He shacks up with a local whore, Ruth, and relates to Ruth really well in the sexual manner, but seems awkward during everyday situations. He inevitable becomes attached to both his wife and Ruth and has a hard time deciding which fate suits him better - or another alternative is neither lifestyle.

This is the first Updike novel I have read, and I was so impressed by the impact of each sentence and the deep rooted meaning and symbolism in every passage. I think in a way, Updike has unfairly been labeled a misogynist, even though he has little respect for Rabbit's wife, Janice.

I found the book to be extremely sad, but quite touching. I imagine many men have gone through this agonizing ordeal of not knowing where there life is heading and if it is even heading in the right direction. Some just run from their problems - like Rabbit.