Rabbit Redux by John Updike

Rabbit Redux by John Updike
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This a strange book. It takes place in the 1960s, and Rabbit is racist and misogynistic, like a lot of people were/are in real life. Rabbit experiences some growth on the racist front, though Rabbit is so flawed that it's very incomplete. I noticed no growth on his misogynism. More importantly, on the racial front, Updike’s writing is grotesque, even apart from and independently of the inner workings of his the character of Rabbit. I'm not a fan of striking books because they're out-of-date (as this one surely is) because we need to look at what seemed normal in a particular time period to understand where we are now. We are still deeply flawed now, and we need to examine why we've come such a small distance in the last 60 years.

The plot mostly creeped me out and seemed overly outlandish. The description of the book above calls it "sexy" and it's the opposite of sexy. All the sex scenes are sad and horrible to me.

Updike is a really good writer and there's a lot of good writing in this big flawed book. I liked the first book better, though I've heard some people say this is their favorite of the set. I can't say I actually enjoyed this one.

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