Rabbit Is Rich

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Rabbit is Rich  
Rabbit is rich.jpg
First edition cover
Author John Updike
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher Alfred A. Knopf
Publication date September 12, 1981
Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages 480 pp
ISBN 0394520874
OCLC Number 7283732
Dewey Decimal 813/.54 19
LC Classification PS3571.P4 R25 1981
Preceded by Rabbit Redux
Followed by Rabbit At Rest

Rabbit Is Rich is a 1981 novel by John Updike. It is the third novel of the four-part series which begins with Rabbit, Run and Rabbit Redux, and concludes with Rabbit At Rest. There is also a related 2001 novella, Rabbit Remembered. Rabbit Is Rich was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction in 1982.

[edit] Plot summary

This third novel of Updike's Rabbit series examines the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a one-time high school basketball star, who has reached a paunchy middle-age without relocating from Brewer, Pennsylvania, the poor, fictional city of his birth. Harry and Janice, his wife of twenty-two years, live comfortably, having inherited her late father's Toyota dealership. He is indeed rich, but Harry's persistent problems — his wife's drinking, his troubled son's schemes, his libido, and spectres from his past — complicate life. Having achieved a lifestyle that would have embarrassed his working-class parents, Harry is not greedy, but neither is he ever quite satisfied. Harry has become somewhat enamored of a country-club friend's young wife. He also has to deal with the indecision and irresponsibility of Nelson, his son, who is a student at Kent State University. Throughout the book, Harry wonders about his former lover Ruth, and whether she had ever given birth to their child.

[edit] External links

Awards
Preceded by
A Confederacy of Dunces
by John Kennedy Toole		 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
1982		 Succeeded by
The Color Purple
by Alice Walker
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v • d • e
Select works of John Updike
Rabbit Novels
Rabbit, Run (1960) • Rabbit Redux (1971) • Rabbit Is Rich (1981) • Rabbit At Rest (1990) • Rabbit Remembered (2001)
Bech books
Bech, a Book (1970) • Bech Is Back (1982) • Bech at Bay (1998)
Buchanan books
Buchanan Dying (1974) • Memories of the Ford Administration (1992)
Eastwick books
The Scarlet Letter trilogy
A Month of Sundays (1975) • Roger's Version (1986) • S. (1988)
Other novels
The Poorhouse Fair (1959) • The Centaur (1963) • Of the Farm (1965) • Couples (1968) • Marry Me: A Romance (1977) • The Coup (1978) •Brazil (1994) • In the Beauty of the Lilies (1996) • Toward the End of Time (1997) • Gertrude and Claudius (2000) • Seek My Face (2002) • Villages (2004) • Terrorist (2006)
Short story collections
The Same Door (1959) • Pigeon Fathers (1962) • Olinger Stories (1964) • The Music School (1966) • Museums and Women (1972) • Too Far to Go (1979) • Problems (1979) • Trust Me (1984) • The Afterlife (1994) • Licks of Love (2000) • The Early Stories (2003) • My Father's Tears (2009)
Poetry collections
The Carpentered Hen (1958) • Telephone Poles (1963) • Midpoint (1969) • Tossing and Turning (1977) • Facing Nature (1985) • Collected Poems (1993) • Americana (2001) • Endpoint (2009)
Settings and characters
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